Data rescue and re-use: Recycling old information to address new policy concerns

Information on past trends is essential to inform future predictions and underpin attribution needed to drive policy responses. It has long been recognised that sustained observations are essential for disentangling climate-driven change from other regional and local-scale anthropogenic impacts and environmental fluctuations or cycles in natural systems. This paper highlights how data rescue and re-use have contributed to the debate on climate change responses of marine biodiversity and ecosystems. It also illustrates via two case studies the re-use of old data to address new policy concerns. The case studies focus on (1) plankton, fish and benthos from the Western English Channel and (2) broad-scale and long-term studies of intertidal species around the British Isles. Case study 1 using the Marine Biological Association of the UK's English Channel data has shown the influence of climatic fluctuations on phenology (migration and breeding patterns) and has also helped to disentangle responses to fishing pressure from those driven by climate, and provided insights into ecosystem-level change in the English Channel. Case study 2 has shown recent range extensions, increases of abundance and changes in phenology (breeding patterns) of southern, warm-water intertidal species in relation to recent rapid climate change and fluctuations in northern and southern barnacle species, enabling modelling and prediction of future states. The case is made for continuing targeted sustained observations and their importance for marine management and policy development.

Impact of human activities on benthic biotopes and species

Executive Summary 1. The Marine Life Information Network (MarLIN) has been developed since 1998. Defra funding has supported a core part of its work, the Biology and Sensitivity Key Information Sub-programme. This report relates to Biology and Sensitivity work for the period 2001-2004. 2. MarLIN Biology and Sensitivity research takes information on the biology of species to identify the likely effects of changing environmental conditions linked to human activities on those species. In turn, species that are key functional, key structural, dominant, or characteristic in a biotope (the habitat and its associated species) are used to identify biotope sensitivity. Results are displayed over the World Wide Web and can be accessed via a range of search tools that make the information of relevance to environmental management. 3. The first Defra contract enabled the development of criteria and methods of research, database storage methods and the research of a wide range of species. A contract from English Nature and Scottish Natural Heritage enabled biotopes relevant to marine SACs to be researched. 4. Defra funding in 2001-2004 has especially enabled recent developments to be targeted for research. Those developments included the identification of threatened and declining species by the OSPAR Biodiversity Committee, the development of a new approach to defining sensitivity (part of the Review of Marine Nature Conservation), and the opportunity to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) more effectively to link survey data to MarLIN assessments of sensitivity. 5. The MarLIN database has been developed to provide a resource to 'pick-and-mix' information depending on the questions being asked. Using GIS, survey data that provides locations for species and biotopes has been linked to information researched by MarLIN to map the likely sensitivity of an area to a specified factor. Projects undertaken for the Irish Sea pilot (marine landscapes), in collaboration with CEFAS (fishing impacts) and with the Countryside Council for Wales (oil spill response) have demonstrated the application of MarLIN information linked to survey data in answering, through maps, questions about likely impacts of human activities on seabed ecosystems. 6. GIS applications that use MarLIN sensitivity information give meaningful results when linked to localized and detailed survey information (lists of species and biotopes as point source or mapped extents). However, broad landscape units require further interpretation. 7. A new mapping tool (SEABED map) has been developed to display data on species distributions and survey data according to search terms that might be used by an environmental manager. 8. MarLIN outputs are best viewed on the Web site where the most up-to-date information from live databases is available. The MarLIN Web site receives about 1600 visits a day. 9. The MarLIN approach to assessing sensitivity and its application to environmental management were presented in papers at three international conferences during the current contract and a 'touchstone' paper is to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Hydrobiologia. The utility of MarLIN information for environmental managers, amongst other sorts of information, has been described in an article in Marine Pollution Bulletin. 10. MarLIN information is being used to inform the identification of potential indicator species for implementation of the Water Framework Directive including initiatives by ICES. 11. Non-Defra funding streams are supporting the updating of reviews and increasing the amount of peer review undertaken; both of which are important to the maintenance of the resource. However, whilst MarLIN information is sufficiently wide ranging to be used in an 'operational' way for marine environmental protection and management, new initiatives and the new biotopes classification have introduced additional species and biotopes that will need to be researched in the future. 12. By the end of the contract, the Biology and Sensitivity Key Information database contained full Key Information reviews on 152 priority species and 117 priority biotopes, together with basic information on 412 species; a total of 564 marine benthic species.

Spatial, seasonal and long-term fluctuations of plankton in relation to hydroclimatic features in the English Channel, Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay

Plankton collected by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey were investigated for the English Channel, Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay from 1979 to 1995. The main goal was to study the relationship between climate and plankton and to understand the factors influencing it. In order to take into account the spatial and temporal structure of biological data, a three-mode principal component analysis (PCA) was developed. It not only identified 5 zones characterised by their similar biological composition and by the seasonal and inter-annual evolution of the plankton, it also made species associations based on their location and year-to-year change. The studied species have stronger year-to-year fluctuations in abundance over the English Channel and Celtic Sea than the species offshore in the Bay of Biscay. The changes in abundance of plankton in the English Channel are negatively related to inter-annual changes of climatic conditions from December to March (North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO] index and air temperature). Thus, the negative relationship shown by Fromentin and Planque (1996; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 134:111-118) between year-to-year changes of Calanus finmarchicus abundance in the northern North Atlantic and North Sea and NAO was also found for the most abundant copepods in the Channel. However, the hypothesis proposed to explain the plankton/NAO relationship is different for this region and a new hypothesis is proposed. In the Celtic Sea, a relationship between the planktonic assemblage and the air temperature was detected, but it is weaker than for the English Channel. No relationship was found for the Bay of Biscay. Thus, the local physical environment and the biological composition of these zones appear to modify the relationship between winter climatic conditions and the year-to-year fluctuations of the studied planktonic species. This shows, therefore, that the relationship between climate and plankton is difficult to generalise.

Arctic boreal plankton species in the Northwest Atlantic

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey has sampled regularly in the Northwest Atlantic since the early 1960s. Over the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in the abundance of a number of arctic boreal plankton species, notably Calanus hyperboreus (Kroyer), Calanus glacialis (Jaschnov), and Ceratium arcticum, and a southerly shift of the copepod C. hyperboreus in the CPR survey. In 1998, C. hyperboreus was recorded at its farthest position south in the survey, 39 degrees N, off the Georges Bank shelf edge. Other studies have reported similar parallel biological responses on three trophic levels. During the late 1990s, production of Labrador Sea Water (LSW) has been at a high, a direct response to the phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The increase in abundance of these species, up to four standard deviations from the long-term mean, is linked to variability in the hydrography of the area and the driving climatic processes of the North Atlantic.