ICES workshop on human activities affecting the seabed - from identifying pressures to operational data products
ICES will host a workshop to identify the main physical disturbance pressures on the seabed in European waters and to derive methods for aggregating cumulative pressures appropriate to the assessment of adverse effects on benthic habitats.
24-26 October 2018
ICES Headquarters
Copenhagen, Denmark
The workshop will assess the spatial extent and distribution of physical disturbance pressures on the seabed (including the intertidal area) for each subdivision and MSFD broad habitat type. Physical disturbance on the seabed by all relevant human activities will be considered; e.g. physical restructuring of the coast and seabed including dredging and depositing of materials, placement of infrastructure, extraction of minerals, including gravel and sand, and the use of bottom-contacting fishing gear. Specific characteristics of all European ecoregions will be considered.
Central to the workshop is the identification of methods that express the intensity of each pressure in a way that allows the aggregation of cumulative pressures, where they occur, whilst at the same time being appropriate to the assessment of adverse effects across various benthic habitats, both for the single pressure and the cumulative of all pressures. The workshop will further determine criteria to guide collation of pressure data across marine regions that ensure the practical use of the data in a second workshop (autumn 2019).
The workshop is chaired by Phillip Boulcott, UK (Scotland) and will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Registration
There is no fee to participate, but registration is required. If you plan to attend, please register at your earliest convenience by contacting Eirini Glyki: eirini@ices.dk.
If the workshop is oversubscribed, ICES reserves the right, in cosultation with the workshop Chairs, to select the final workshop participants based on geographic and subject expertise distribution.
