EMECO

EMECO: An Overview

What is EMECO?

EMECO is a consortium of agencies and institutes with responsibility for both monitoring and assessment of marine ecosystem threats and status (health), and also for improving understanding through research in European shelf-seas.

The consortium was formed in response to the challenges posed by the new Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the need to provide the improved evidence in support of the ecosystem approach.

The Challenge

The MSFD requires a wide range of marine scientific evidence to support the ecosystem approach. The evidence required will be cross-boundary and be based on observations from physics to fish over wide time and space scales.

Against a background of limited national resources EMECO provides a mechanism for ensuring best practice is adopted and can identify areas of overlap and any gaps in current capability. It also improves dialogue between interested actors, aiming to maximise synergies between Member State and Community efforts.

EMECO in Practice

EMECO partners are responsible for a number of long-term marine ecosystem monitoring and modelling programmes. EMECO brings these resources together to form a framework that supports an operational approach to European marine ecosystem management.   

As a starting point the North Sea provides a number of opportunities for synergy between on-going monitoring and research programmes operated by EMECO partners.

For example, a Cefas SmartBuoy is deployed on the Dutch Oyster Grounds in collaboration with the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat and Deltares. This region is also in the vicinity of a joint Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR: route HE) and a GKSS FerryBox route between Immingham and Cuxhaven as well as overflights by satellites that provide maps of water quality parameters derived from ocean colour.

In addition, many EMECO partners run complex coupled hydrodynamic models with North Sea domains that benefit from these observations and in return provide tools for improving understanding and predicting changes in the ecosystem in this region.

A focal point for EMECO will be to provide mechanisms not only for coordinating on-going observations but also to identify methods for bringing together multi-agency data from a range of sampling platforms with model results. This will generate integrated products for use in environmental assessments and also for research.