scholarly journals Spatial patterns of infauna, epifauna, and demersal fish communities in the North Sea

2009 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Reiss ◽  
Steven Degraer ◽  
Gerard C. A. Duineveld ◽  
Ingrid Kröncke ◽  
John Aldridge ◽  
...  

Abstract Reiss, H., Degraer, S., Duineveld, G. C. A., Kröncke, I., Aldridge, J., Craeymeersch, J., Eggleton, J. D., Hillewaert, H., Lavaleye, M. S. S., Moll, A., Pohlmann, T., Rachor, E., Robertson, M., vanden Berghe, E., van Hoey, G., and Rees, H. L. 2010. Spatial patterns of infauna, epifauna, and demersal fish communities in the North Sea. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 67: 278–293. Understanding the structure and interrelationships of North Sea benthic invertebrate and fish communities and their underlying environmental drivers is an important prerequisite for conservation and spatial ecosystem management on scales relevant to ecological processes. Datasets of North Sea infauna, epifauna, and demersal fish (1999–2002) were compiled and analysed to (i) identify and compare spatial patterns in community structure, and (ii) relate these to environmental variables. The multivariate analyses revealed significantly similar large-scale patterns in all three components with major distinctions between a southern community (Oyster Ground and German Bight), an eastern Channel and southern coastal community, and at least one northern community (>50 m deep). In contrast, species diversity patterns differed between the components with a diversity gradient for infauna and epifauna decreasing from north to south, and diversity hotspots of demersal fish, e.g. near the major inflows of Atlantic water. The large-scale hydrodynamic variables were the main drivers for the structuring of communities, whereas sediment characteristics appeared to be less influential, even for the infauna communities. The delineation of ecologically meaningful ecosystem management units in the North Sea might be based on the structure of the main faunal ecosystem components.

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Young

The possible presence of very large petroleum and natural gas reserves in the area beneath the North Sea is currently the subject of intense investigation. If confirmed, as seems likely in at least some localities, this occurrence will raise legal problems of considerable interest and complexity. For the North Sea is not merely an oilfield covered by water: for centuries it has been one of the world's major fishery regions and the avenue to and from the world's busiest seaports. Thus all three of the present principal uses of the sea—fishing, navigation, and the exploitation of submarine resources—promise to meet for the first time on a large scale in an area where all are of major importance. The process of reconciling the various interests at stake will provide the first thoroughgoing test of the adequacy and acceptability of the general principles laid down in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf and should add greatly to the practice and precedents available in this developing branch of the law. In the present article an attempt is made to review some of the geographical and economic considerations involved in the North Sea situation, to note some of the technical and legal developments that have already taken place, and to consider these elements in the light of the various interests and legal principles concerned.


2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Jensen ◽  
Anna Rindorf ◽  
Peter J. Wright ◽  
Henrik Mosegaard

Abstract Jensen, H., Rindorf, A., Wright, P. J., and Mosegaard, H. 2011. Inferring the location and scale of mixing between habitat areas of lesser sandeel through information from the fishery. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 43–51. Sandeels are small pelagic fish that play an important role in the diet of a range of natural predators. Because of their limited capture by traditional survey gear, little is known about their large-scale distribution or the degree of mixing between habitat areas. Detailed information collected directly from the fishery was used to map fishing grounds, which were then assumed to reflect the foraging habitat of the species. Length distributions from individual hauls were used to assess differences in the distributions as a function of distance between samples. Sandeel foraging habitat covered some 5% of the total area of the North Sea. Mixing between neighbouring fishing grounds was too low to eliminate differences in length distributions at distances between grounds down to 5 km. Within fishing grounds, mixing was sufficient to eliminate differences in length distributions at scales <28 km but insufficient at greater distances. The lack of mixing between grounds may result in large differences in sandeel abundance among adjacent fishing grounds. Further, notable abundance at one end of an extensive fishing ground is not necessarily indicative of similar abundance at its other end.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon P. R. Greenstreet ◽  
Helen M. Fraser ◽  
Stuart I. Rogers ◽  
Verena M. Trenkel ◽  
Stephen D. Simpson ◽  
...  

Abstract Greenstreet, S. P. R., Fraser, H. M., Rogers, S. I., Trenkel, V. M., Simpson, S. D., and Pinnegar, J. K. 2012. Redundancy in metrics describing the composition, structure, and functioning of the North Sea demersal fish community. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 8–22. Broader ecosystem management objectives for North Sea demersal fish currently focus on restoring community size structure. However, most policy drivers explicitly concentrate on restoring and conserving biodiversity, and it has not yet been established that simply restoring demersal fish size composition will be sufficient to reverse declines in biodiversity and ensure a generally healthy community. If different aspects of community composition, structure, and function vary independently, then to monitor all aspects of community general health will require application of a suite of metrics. This assumes low redundancy among the metrics used in any such suite and implies that addressing biodiversity issues specifically will require explicit management objectives for particular biodiversity metrics. This issue of metric redundancy is addressed, and 15 metrics covering five main attributes of community composition, structure, and function are applied to groundfish survey data. Factor analysis suggested a new interpretation of the metric information and indicated that a minimum suite of seven metrics was necessary to ensure that all changes in the general health of the North Sea demersal fish community were monitored properly. Covariance among size-based and species-diversity metrics was low, implying that restoration of community size structure would not necessarily reverse declines in species diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (4) ◽  
pp. A80-A81
Author(s):  
Jakob Tougaard ◽  
Thomas Folegot ◽  
Christ de Jong ◽  
Emily T. Griffiths ◽  
Alexander M. von Benda-Beckmann ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Juan Gea Bermúdez ◽  
Kaushik Das ◽  
Hardi Koduvere ◽  
Matti Juhani Koivisto

This paper proposes a mathematical model to simulate Day-ahead markets of large-scale multi-energy systems with high share of renewable energy. Furthermore, it analyses the importance of including unit commitment when performing such analysis. The results of the case study, which is performed for the North Sea region, show the influence of massive renewable penetration in the energy sector and increasing electrification of the district heating sector towards 2050, and how this impacts the role of other energy sources such as thermal and hydro. The penetration of wind and solar is likely to challenge the need for balancing in the system as well as the profitability of thermal units. The degree of influence of the unit commitment approach is found to be dependent on the configuration of the energy system. Overall, including unit commitment constraints with integer variables leads to more realistic behaviour of the units, at the cost of increasing considerably the computational time. Relaxing integer variables reduces significantly the computational time, without highly compromising the accuracy of the results. The proposed model, together with the insights from the study case, can be specially useful for system operators for optimal operational planning.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simin Jin ◽  
David Kemp ◽  
David Jolley ◽  
Manuel Vieira ◽  
Chunju Huang

&lt;p&gt;The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ~56 Ma) was the most marked climate warming event of the Cenozoic, and a potentially useful deep time analogue for understanding environmental responses to anthropogenic carbon emissions and associated warming. The response of sedimentary systems to the large-scale climate changes of the PETM are, however, still uncertain. Here, we present an extremely thick (~140 m) record of the PETM in cores from a well in the North Sea, offshore UK. In this well, a thick Paleocene-Eocene interval is developed owing to uplift of the East Shetland Platform in the late Paleocene. Carbon isotope data through this well, coupled with detailed sedimentological analysis, show that the PETM interval is contemporaneous with &gt;200 sandstone turbidites layers. Mud deposition without turbidites dominated sedimentation below and above the PETM. These observations support previous work from other localities highlighting how climate warming during the PETM likely drove substantial changes in hydrological cycling, erosion and sediment supply. Spectral analysis of turbidite recurrence in the PETM interval suggests that the abundance of turbidites was modulated in part by ~21 kyr astronomical precession climate cycles, further emphasizing a potential climatic control on turbidite sedimentation. In detail, we note a kiloyear-scale time lag between onset of the PETM carbon isotope excursion and the appearance of turbidites in the succession, highlighting a delay between PETM carbon release and warming and the basin-wide response in sediment supply.&lt;/p&gt;


2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 1772-1786 ◽  
Author(s):  
A D Rijnsdorp ◽  
J G Hiddink ◽  
P D van Denderen ◽  
N T Hintzen ◽  
O R Eigaard ◽  
...  

Abstract Fisheries using bottom trawls are the most widespread source of anthropogenic physical disturbance to seafloor habitats. To mitigate such disturbances, the development of fisheries-, conservation-, and ecosystem-based management strategies requires the assessment of the impact of bottom trawling on the state of benthic biota. We explore a quantitative and mechanistic framework to assess trawling impact. Pressure and impact indicators that provide a continuous pressure–response curve are estimated at a spatial resolution of 1 × 1 min latitude and longitude (∼2 km2) using three methods: L1 estimates the proportion of the community with a life span exceeding the time interval between trawling events; L2 estimates the decrease in median longevity in response to trawling; and population dynamic (PD) estimates the decrease in biomass in response to trawling and the recovery time. Although impact scores are correlated, PD has the best performance over a broad range of trawling intensities. Using the framework in a trawling impact assessment of ten métiers in the North Sea shows that muddy habitats are impacted the most and coarse habitats are impacted the least. Otter trawling for crustaceans has the highest impact, followed by otter trawling for demersal fish and beam trawling for flatfish and flyshooting. Beam trawling for brown shrimps, otter trawling for industrial fish, and dredging for molluscs have the lowest impact. Trawling is highly aggregated in core fishing grounds where the status of the seafloor is low but the catch per unit of effort (CPUE) per unit of impact is high, in contrast to peripheral grounds, where CPUE per unit of impact is low.


2016 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph D. Rummel ◽  
Martin G.J. Löder ◽  
Nicolai F. Fricke ◽  
Thomas Lang ◽  
Eva-Maria Griebeler ◽  
...  

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