The Multi-Use in European Seas (MUSES) project will review existing planning and consenting processes against international quality standards for MSP and compliance with EU Directives used to facilitate marine and coastal development in the EU marine area to ensure that they are robust, efficient and facilitate sustainable multi use of marine resources. The project will build knowledge of the appropriate techniques to minimize barriers, impacts and risks, whilst maximising local benefits, reducing gaps in knowledge to deliver efficiencies through integrated planning, consenting processes and other techniques. MUSES Project - 3 main pillars: 1. Regional overviews which take into account EU sea basins (Baltic Sea, North Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Eastern Atlantic) will be based on an analytical framework to facilitate adoption of a common approach across the sea basins. The progress in implementation of the concept of Multi-Uses in European Sea Basins will be assessed and key obstacles and drivers identified. 2. A comprehensive set of case studies of real and/or potential multi-use will be conducted and analysed to provide a complete spectrum of advantages in combining different uses of the sea. The case studies will create local stakeholder platforms to identify multi-use potentiality, opportunities and limitations. 3. Development of an Action Plan to address the challenges and opportunities for the development of Multi-Uses of oceans identified in the regional overviews and case studies. Provide recommendations for future action, taking into account national, regional and sea basin dimensions. The project will build on work undertaken in other studies including Mermaid, TROPOS, H2Ocean and SUBMARINER. MUSES project partners have direct links with related forums including The Ocean Energy Forum (OEF) which will assist understanding of many issues that need to be addressed at an EU level and could help facilitate and implement the OEF roadmap.

The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica, is one of the worst invasive pests of North America. Costs to control the pest in the US exceed $450 million per year. P. japonica was detected near Milano in 2014, and is now starting to spread in Europe. It is an enormous threat to Europe, since (1) it can feed on more than 300 host plants, including many important crops, (2) it is a good flyer and can be relocated via movement of goods and people, (3) climate suitability puts at risk an area ranging from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, and from the Mediterranean to Great Britain and Southern Scandinavia. EFSA and the JRC of the European Commission nominated P. japonica a candidate high priority pest in the EU in the new EU Plant health Law. IPM-Popillia has the aim to counteract this invasion. The project will provide fast and reliable monitoring tools, including an app-based citizen science approach to rise public awareness. Its main deliverable will be an IPM-Toolbox for control of P. japonica, relying exclusively on environmentally friendly control measures. Several teams of the consortium will collaborate in the core of the recent outbreak area, doing practical research in an European environment that can be applied immediatedly. The ambition of IPM-Popillia is to show that it is possible to control the new pest, and meet the requirements of quarantine regulations, and at the same time respect the environment and the principles of the sustainable use directive. IPM-Popillia will provide an integrated pest management strategy against P. japonica at a very early timepoint of the invasion process. So far, the new pest is still confined to one single and comparatively small area of about 6’000 square kilometres on mainland Europe. This timeliness is exceptional when compared to previous invasions into Europe, and will significantly enhance chances for successful containment, provided that the starting signal is given NOW.

Marine environments are subject to growing pressures as traffic, increasing demand and changing land-use of coastal areas, seabed exploitation, dredging or mining, fishing, tourism, development of renewable energies, etc. Sustainably managed oceans and seas can contribute to economic growth and employment, and will allow the international community to meet its global targets, including the reduction of poverty and hunger as detailed in the global 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Thus, marine environments are considered opportunities for future growth not only in Europe, but also in bordering marine areas like the tropical Atlantic. As a consequence, new frameworks will be increasingly needed to regulate and optimize the range of feasible uses of marine areas and resources. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) aims at reconciling human uses and conservation, and offers an attractive setting to combine different uses of marine resources within a single area. There is an urgent and critical need for research on the application of MSP in tropical areas. The research should critically address the fact that the policy framework originally designed for the European Union (EU) may not fit the specificities of Southern countries. PADDLE will bring together internationally renowned researchers and actors, from countries bordering the tropical Atlantic and from the EU, to create a network and a colloborative platform, which will build theory and methods for pertinent MSP in tropical areas. This interdisciplinary team will be a pillar of knowledge-based MSP by providing critical analyses of the tools and methods used, and by designing innovative approaches to efficient MSP. The PADDLE proposal will create the first North-South interdisciplinary consortium on MSP in the tropics, highlighting opportunities and limits of tropical MSP and producing toolboxes for a broad range of stakeholders.

The EU 2020 Biodiversity strategy and 7th Environment Action Programme highlight the importance of halting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) by preserving ecosystems and fully integrating environmental requirements into policymaking to face climate change (CC). The main challenge to help the EU deliver on these targets is to fill knowledge gaps on inter-relations between CC, biodiversity and ES, and to ensure an effective transfer of knowledge to relevant stakeholders. Marine coastal ecosystems (MCE) are European priority habitats as almost half of its population lives in its maritime regions. MaCoBioS objective is to ensure efficient and integrated management and conservation strategies for European MCE to face CC. To this end, MaCoBioS has assembled a multidisciplinary team of experts to fill the lack of knowledge on the impacts of CC on the most important MCE (seagrass beds, coral reefs, mangroves, coralligenous and calcareous bio-concretion assemblages, salt marshes and kelp forests). Four specific objectives have been developed: 1) Develop new empirical models on the interaction between CC, biodiversity, functions and services in MCE along a geographical gradient from the tropics to the sub-polar regions, incorporating indicators of the ecological condition in the functional modelling of MCE. 2) Establish a framework to assess the vulnerability of marine social-ecological systems under CC scenarios. We will develop vulnerability indices specifically for that purpose. 3) Evaluate the effectiveness of nature-based solutions and protection measures at enhancing the resilience capacity of MCE and the delivery of services, with the end goal of providing long-term solutions to CC threats. 4) Provide evidence-based guidance for marine policy formulation and innovative research pathways to support policymakers in developing cost-effective strategies and create further research opportunities to meet the targets of EU strategies on Biodiversity and CC.

It has been robustly demonstrated that variations in the circulation of the middle atmosphere influence weather and climate throughout the troposphere all the way to the Earth’s surface. A key part of the coupling between the troposphere and stratosphere occurs through the propagation and breaking of planetary-scale Rossby waves and gravity waves. Limited observation of the middle atmosphere and these waves in particular limits the ability to faithfully reproduce the dynamics of the middle atmosphere in numerical weather prediction and climate models. ARISE2 capitalizes upon the work of the EU-funded first ARISE project combining for the first time international networks with complementary technologies such as infrasound, lidar and airglow. This joint network provided advanced data products that started to be used as benchmarks for weather forecast models. The ARISE network also allows enhanced and detailed monitoring of other extreme events in the Earth system such as erupting volcanoes, magnetic storms, tornadoes and tropical thunderstorms. In order to improve the ability of the network to monitor atmospheric dynamics, ARISE2 proposes to extend i) the existing network coverage in Africa and the high latitudes, ii) the altitude range in the stratosphere and mesosphere, iii) the observation duration using routine observation modes, and to use complementary existing infrastructures and innovative instrumentations. Data will be collected over the long term to improve weather forecasting to monthly or seasonal timescales, to monitor atmospheric extreme events and climate change. Compared to the first ARISE project, ARISE2 focuses on the link between models and observations for future assimilation of data by operational weather forecasting models. Among the applications, ARISE2 proposes infrasound remote volcano monitoring to provide notifications to civil aviation. The data portal will provide high-quality data and advanced data products to a wide scientific community.