As the global movement focuses on defending at least 30% of our blue planet by 2030 (“30×30”), the need to protect our planet’s life support systems comes at the forefront, especially to underline the interconnected issues of ocean, climate, and biodiversity. COST Actions are very active in the field of Marine Science, tackling these interconnected issues through several multidisciplinary partnerships. To add an additional steppingstone on this special World Ocean Day, COST joined GEOMAR, the leading Marine Science institute specialised in Ocean Research, to present COST opportunities for new researchers and to keep fostering networking activities to propel new solutions related to Ocean Science and sustainability.
2021 is an important year, it marks the starting phase of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development looking at strengthening the management of our oceans and coasts for the benefit of humanity. Ocean Science combines a variety of disciplines (physical, geological, chemical oceanography as well as marine biology) that study and provide data on the global marine environment. Partnerships are essential to understand the ocean’s role in climate regulation but also to improve conditions for the sustainable development of the ocean, seas and coasts. In this respect, COST Actions create the perfect space to harness the combination of expertise but also to foster new partnerships and help progressing on this path.
Presenting COST at GEOMAR
GEOMAR is a world-wide leading institute for marine research. Today, COST Science Officer, Dr Deniz Karaca was invited to present the COST programme and its networking opportunities to a wide audience in the field of ocean research.
During her presentation, Dr Karaca underlined the role of COST in establishing of scientific excellence in Marine Sciences and how key findings of COST networks increased the understanding of the function of marine ecosystems and its response to climate change. (Please read more in the relevant abstract ” Karaca, D.: Creating Impact through COST Action networks, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22484″)
COST Actions and Ocean Science
Through COST Actions, knowledge and expertise from various fields and experts are brought together to help advancing complex Ocean’s research developments.
As an example, the COST Action MEDSALT “Uncovering the Mediterranean salt giant”, addresses an issue that is inherently cross-disciplinary: studying the causes and consequences of the “Messinian “salt layer in the Mediterranean basin, the largest and most recent salt giant on Earth. This scientific network created the opportunity to share objectives, data and expertise with industry and was granted with an EU funding shortly after the end of the COST Action, building on the initial network’s assets. COST Action MIGRATE, “Marine gas hydrate – an indigenous resource of natural gas for Europe”, also integrates the expertise of a large number of European research groups and industrial players, in this case to integrate to promote the development of multidisciplinary knowledge on the potential of gas hydrates as an economically feasible and environmentally sound energy resource.
Marine biodiversity’s services are used unsustainably causing ecosystems to deteriorate faster than others and putting marine biodiversity under important thread due to the intensity of cumulative human impacts. The COST Action MarCons, “Advancing marine conservation in the European and contiguous seas”, helps improving marine biodiversity conservation by bridging the gap between conservation science and policy makers, and contribute to the challenge of halting biodiversity loss in the European Seas by 2020.
Harnessing Ocean’s potential sustainably also helps addressing climate change issues by using new solutions to address the growing energy demand. As part of marine renewable energy resources, the potential of wave energy has triggered lot of interest over the past years, but several challenges are still blocking the full life-cycle development of technologies such as through Wave Energy Converter (WECs) Arrays.
The WECANet Action, “A pan-European Network for Marine Renewable Energy”, aims at dealing specifically with the current bottlenecks to contribute to large-scale WEC Array deployment.
Promoting scientific and multidisciplinary collaborations is key to help building shared information system worldwide. COST Actions are therefore strong contributors to the ongoing efforts to build the global Ocean Science needed to support the sustainable development of our shared ocean.
More information:
COST Connect – The Blue Planet – What future for European Ocean Research? | COST