5 - Using marine connectivity to inform management strategies and mitigate human impacts
Conveners:
Ant Türkmen (LifeWatch ERIC, Italy)
Burak Ali Çiçek (Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus)
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Marine ecosystems are connected – any management of marine habitats and species should be informed by marine connectivity to enhance recruitment, genetic exchange, and ontogenetic movement, as well as to avoid harmful connectivity of pathogens and pollutants. Marine resources are increasingly threatened, degraded or destroyed by human activities, reducing their ability to provide crucial ecosystem services. Important threats are, climate change, marine pollution, unsustainable extraction of marine resources and physical alterations and destruction of habitats and landscapes. Good governance, globally accepted targets, sustainable marine based human activities and adequate measures will be required to reduce the negative anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment. Projects and measures should ideally be designed and implemented in an integrated manner, in line with the ecological connectivity approach and involving all stakeholders.
This session aims to showcase examples of connectivity-smart management and challenges, and the approaches required to achieve this. Presentations will highlight how the ecological, biophysical, and social dimensions of connectivity can or have informed marine management.
