AtlantECO Deliverable D4.5- Report on augmented observations

The AtlantECO Project aims to study the Atlantic Ocean from pole to pole to determine the structure and function of the Atlantic microbiome in the context of ocean circulation and presence of pollutants to assess 1) its role in driving the dynamics of Atlantic ecosystems at basin and regional scales; 2) its potential of being used as a sensor of ecosystem state and 3) the mechanism by which it drives the provision of ecosystem services.

In order to deliver this, the project builds on four activity streams (AS)

●  AS1: Asses the status of the ecosystem structures, functions, health and services at regional, basin and all Atlantic scales and provide high quality gridded data products and maps

●  AS2: Enhance knowledge and innovate by adopting standard optical and genetic observations protocols, cutting-edge network analysis methods and better parametrisation of connectivity and biogeochemical models

●  AS3: Assess drivers and stressors of change and forecast their impact on tipping points and recovery of ecosystem structures, functions and services and develop eco-socio-economic models to predict their future states

●  AS4: Share and use capacity and knowledge across the four continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean ensuring a seamless engagement between science, industry, policy and society.

AtlantECO addresses three major challenges microbiome, plastics and the plastisphere and seascape and connectivity and defines these as the scientific concepts underpinning the Project which, together with their interactions, will help address the gap in current knowledge and understanding on how they affect ecology, biodiversity, sensitivity to climate change and the potential for a sustainable exploitation of Atlantic natural resources. Building on the knowledge acquired about the status and dynamics of the Atlantic ecosystem, an additional challenge will be to optimize a set of tools and metrics to tightly couple ecosystem functioning and socio-economic activities, integrating them in a unified framework with Eco-Socio-Economic analyses and projections, which we consider a prerequisite for the sustainable management of the Atlantic Ocean. A final challenge to be addressed by AtlantECO is the design of a strategy and of procedures to guarantee that the new unified framework will be implemented in a systemic way so that all the components of the implicated societies in countries bordering the basin will contribute to the implementation and will fully benefit from it.

AtlantECO focuses on five ecosystem services:

• ●  ES1: Climate support system: carbon drawdown and storage

• ●  ES2: Deep ocean life support system: transfer of matter & energy to mesopelagic and seabed

  ecosystems.

• ●  ES3: Food security and the trophic fluxes: fisheries and aquaculture.

• ●  ES4: Healthy planet, healthy people: biohazards, cycling of plastics and pollutants

• ●  ES5: Biodiversity: resilience, adaptation and contribution to the Bioeconomy, including new chemicals

  One objective of WP4 is to generate new observations about microbiomes, plastics and the plastisphere. It is implemented by Task 4.2 through dedicated sampling activities in the North and South Atlantic (see details below), and its results are exploited in first instance by WPs 2, 5 and 6, and shared with the wider research community following the project’s Data Management Plan (WP10). Progress was achieved to various degrees by the six Subtasks implementing this objective, two of which (Subtask 4.2.1 Flagships and 4.2.6 Third party cruises) saw several delays due to covid-19 restrictions, and two others (Subtasks 4.2.2 AA-OSD and 4.2.3 S4S) were rescheduled and are still in the planning phase to ensure the success of our engagement with external partners and citizens. These delays justified in part the extension of the project's calendar to 60 months to ensure the delivery of new observations during the second and third periods of the project with minimum disruption to their exploitation by other Work Packages. This deliverable is the first version of a series of reports on AtlantECO’s augmented observations resulting from Task 4.3.