Ecopath with Ecosim foodweb modelling GES4SEAS main results. North Sea.

A range of mechanistic modelling approaches has been developed to study marine ecosystem dynamics, climate change, and cumulative effects on Good Environmental Status (GES). The GES4Seas project applied Ecopath with Ecosim food-web models (EwE; Christensen and Walters, 2004; Christensen et al., 2014) across multiple European regional seas, including the North Sea, Baltic Sea, Bay of Biscay, and Western Mediterranean Sea, as well as subregions such as the Local Baltic Sea and the Portuguese Shelf.

These models were developed to explore the consequences of climate change (CC), the implementation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), habitat restoration activities for habitat-forming species, and fisheries management on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem service provision (Coll et al., 2024). We demonstrate how these models can be used to investigate cumulative impacts by incorporating offshore wind farms and changes in shipping traffic into the North Sea marine environment.

The database contains the main results obtained for the North Sea. Additional information on the models is available in Deliverable 3.2, Applications of Selected Tools by Learning Sites, Their Specific Configurations and Main Outputs to Test Tipping Points and Thresholds: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18247496