Publications

Juliette Aminian-Biquet, Claire Colegrove, Alex Driedger, Nicole Raudsepp, Jennifer Sletten, Timothé Vincent, Virgil Zetterlind, Julia Roessger, Anastasiya Laznya, Natașa Vaidianu, Joachim Claudet, Juliette Young, Barbara Horta e Costa. 2024. Regulations of activities and protection levels in marine protected areas of the European Union: A dataset compiled from multiple data sources. Data in Brief. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.111177

The dataset gathers available regulations of human activities and protection levels of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) of the European Union (EU). The MPA list and polygons were extracted from the MPA database of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and completed with available zoning systems (all were filtered for their marine area reported under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive). Fully-overlapping MPAs were merged. In ...

Laurel C. Field, Kendyl Wright, Jenna Sullivan-Stack, Jean M. Harris, Stephen P. Kirkman, Peter J. Fielding, Ané Oosthuizen, Siyabonga Dlulisa, Anastasiya Laznya, Emanuel J. Gonçalves, Kirsten Grorud-Colvert. 2024. Assessing South Africa’s marine protected area quality and progress towards conservation goals: An application of The MPA Guide framework. Marine Policy, Volume 173, 2025, 106513. ISSN 0308-597X. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106513.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a widely used area-based conservation tool for preventing or reversing the loss of marine biodiversity and sustaining the social-ecological systems that it underpins. Global targets for ocean protection typically track the extent of ocean area within MPAs. However, understanding the effectiveness of protection is crucial, as the level of protection and associated benefits for biodiversity and ...

Tilde Krusberg, Lova Schildt, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Erik Zhivkoplias, Robert Blasiak. 2024. A review of marine genetic resource valuations. npj Ocean Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00081-7

Marine biotechnology is a rapidly growing sector of the ocean economy, but efforts to assess its value, and that of the genetic resources that enable it, remain contentious. Through a comprehensive literature review, we identified 67 distinct valuations of marine genetic resources. We analysed these using the IPBES Values Assessment typology and found a predominance of behaviour-based valuations using economic value indicators...

Paul Pearce-Kelly, Andrew H. Altier, John F. Bruno, Christopher E. Cornwall, Melanie McField, Aarón Israel Muñiz-Castillo, Juan Rocha, Renee O. Setter, Charles Sheppard, Rosa Maria Roman-Cuesta, Chris Yesson. 2024. Assessment of warm-water coral reef tipping point thresholds. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-35

Warm-water coral reefs are facing unprecedented Anthropogenic driven threats to their continued existence as biodiverse, functional ecosystems upon which hundreds of millions of people rely. Determining the tipping point thresholds of coral reef ecosystems requires robust assessment of multiple stressors and their interactive effects. We draw upon a literature search and the recent Global Tipping Points Revision initiative to ...

Areti Balkoni, Wolfgang zu Castell, Karen H. Wiltshire, Maarten Boersma, Hannah Zoller. 2024. Adaptive cycles of a phyto-zooplankton community under human pressure. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16349

Human activities, such as global warming and nutrient pollution, are posing significant threats to the ecological interactions and biodiversity in aquatic environments. The German Bight, a highly dynamic coastal region of the North Sea, has been subject to considerable warming and nutrient fluctuations over recent decades. These changes have had profound impacts on the plankton communities in this area, leading to a swift reor...

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray. 2024. When will the BBNJ Agreement deliver results?. npj Ocean Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00058-6

A new international agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) was adopted and subsequently opened for signature in September 2023. Yet on average, recent multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have taken over four years to move from signature to entry into force, while ocean-focused MEAs have taken nearly twice as long. Rapid ratification of the ...

Jean Baptiste Jouffray, John Virdin. 2024. The Blue Acceleration in Human Use of the Ocean. Elgar Encyclopedia of Water Policy, Economics and Management. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802202946.00066

Patrick W. Keys, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Michele-Lee Moore, Agnes Pranindita, Fabian Stenzel, Olli Varis, Rekha Warrier, R. Bin Wong, Paolo D'Odorico, Carl Folke. 2024. The dry sky: future scenarios for humanity's modification of the atmospheric water cycle. Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9

Human societies are changing where and how water flows through the atmosphere. However, these changes in the atmospheric water cycle are not being managed, nor is there any real sense of where these changes might be headed in the future. Thus, we develop a new economic theory of atmospheric water management, and explore this theory using creative story-based scenarios. These scenarios reveal surprising possibilities for the fu...

Xander Huggins, Tom Gleeson, Karen Villholth, Juan Rocha, James Famiglietti. 2024. Groundwaterscapes: A global classification and mapping of groundwater’s large-scale socioeconomic, ecological, and Earth system functions. EarthArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5M382

Groundwater is a dynamic component of the global water cycle with important social, economic, ecological, and Earth system functions. We present a new global classification and mapping of groundwater systems, which we call groundwaterscapes, that represent predominant configurations of large-scale groundwater system functions. We identify 18 groundwaterscapes, which offer a new lens to conceptualize, study, model, and manage g...

Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, Shane Griffiths, Hilario Murua, Henrik Österblom, Jon Lopez. 2024. Adaptive spatiotemporal management to reduce shark bycatch in tuna fisheries. Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14324

Purse-seine tropical tuna fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (EPO) results in the bycatch of several sensitive species groups, including elasmobranchs. Effective ecosystem management balances conservation and resource use and requires considering trade-offs and synergies. Seasonal and adaptive spatial measures can reduce fisheries impacts on nontarget species while maintaining or increasing target catches. Identifyi...