Read the fourth MARCIS Newsletter for project progress and highlights.
Dear reader,
One of the main goals of the MARCIS project is to co-develop the MARCIS marine spatial planning tool, and finding good ways to collaborate in science, industry and management is therefore a strong focus. To help us ensure collaboration and co-design of the MARCIS app, we have established an arena for information exchange, and focussed on a case-study to help illustrate how we envision that the tool can be built up.
This spring we have been working hard on an early demo version of the MARCIS app. We received funding from Equinor through an add-on project, to boost the development of the MARCIS app and to provide us with a foundation for its’ further development. Since MARCIS is a collaborative project between science, industry and management, it is important that all parts of the project engage in the co-design of the app to ensure its’ relevance. The development of the demo used a potential offshore wind farm area, Trollvind, as a case study to test how MARCIS can contribute as a marine spatial planning tool in a specific case. Although this case study area was later postponed as a potential OWF area, using it as an example in the MARCIS app was very useful and boosted the development of the different parts of MARCIS as well as the coordination between these. We now have a good platform to develop further, a good overview of what will and will not work in terms of visualization of seabird distribution and stressor data, and the different quantification approaches of the population impacts are in place. Details of how this early demo of the app and the different approaches it consists of can be found in the Trollvind report. This add-on project also included a scoping of what birds used the Trollvind area during all seasons of the year, including migration. The Scoping shows that the density of birds is highest closer to land, but that there are seasonal variations in how sensitive different species groups are to different offshore areas. Another main finding from this work was that migratory birds of prey, gulls, geese, ducks and owls have the highest risk of collision with wind turbines. Migratory seabirds, other waterbirds and waders, on the other hand, have a higher risk of being displaced or exposed to barrier effects of offshore wind installations. You can read more about the results of this add-on project in the scoping report and the Trollvind report. We hope that this work can provide a good foundation and a shared understanding when we continue to co-develop the MARCIS app as a decision support tool for marine spatial planning.
This autumn we have set up a monthly program for our new “lunch and learn” series, which we hope will serve as an arena to exchange information and meet the specific needs of project participants. These informal seminars will provide an arena to increase our common understanding and create dialogue to ensure co-design of the MARCIS tool. We will provide an overview of the work and data flow in the project, and talk about topics such as app visualisation, as well as the different approaches of how we calculate seabird sensitivity and vulnerability, how this all leads into knowledge of cumulative impact of marine stressors and climate change on seabirds, and eventually how it goes into the MARCIS app. For those of you that have been following our website, you will have seen our most recent story on how agent-based models can be used as a tool to predict the impacts of stressors on individual seabirds. We will elaborate on topics such as these and create an opportunity for project stakeholders to provide feedback on what MARCIS is doing. The two first “lunch and learns” took place in September. The first seminar was an introduction to the series, and the second focussed on work and data flow and the different stressors and data layers. It was great to see so many of you there, and we hope that the seminar will continue to be a popular addition to the MARCIS project!
MARCIS also created a short film to communicate the goals of the MARCIS project to a wider audience. Thank you to Equinor for the funding, NRK for some beautiful film clips, and to Juliet Landrø at the NINA communications department and Hannah Whitman at the Science Animation Studio for their wonderful work! Hopefully this film will help more people understand the importance of the project and the usefulness of the MARCIS-app. Please feel free to share the film on social media or when you present the project at meetings and conferences!
Best wishes,
Tone Kristin Reiertsen (MARCIS project leader)
Feel free to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and ResearchGate! The MARCIS logo and project flyer can be used at conferences and meetings where the project and its results are being presented.