[Sofia Martins]

The Mediterranean region is considered both a biodiversity hotspot and a climate change hotspot, as it is warming 20% faster than the global average. Indeed, climate change and biodiversity loss are related issues. Yet, the understanding of this connection is far from consistent and slow to filter down to local governance scales, through a lack of technical capacities but also through poor information flows and a lack of policy coordination.

The Natural Heritage Mission plans to tackle these challenges through its objectives which include the promotion of climate change adaptation, disaster risk prevention, and socio-ecological resilience, taking into account ecosystem-based approaches. In addition, the Mission aims at enhancing the protection and conservation of nature, biodiversity and green infrastructure, including urban areas and reducing pollution.

The main driver for the Mission Working Groups’ activities will be the recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Specifically, the Working Group on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation is focusing on two of its targets, namely Target 8 and Target 12.

Minimize the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity and increase its resilience through mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction actions.
Significantly increase the area and quality and connectivity of, access to, and benefits from green and blue spaces in urban and densely populated areas sustainably.

We want to initiate the discussion with you around climate change mitigation and adaptation!

What challenges are you facing when involved in policy drafting and the implementation of technical solutions? How can the Mission for Natural Heritage support you in these processes?

Do you have any good practice, lesson learned, solution or tool you can share with us that could help us in the process?

We read you in the comments 👀

[Dario Giaiotti]

Dear Sofia,

I agree with you on the intimate link between climate change and biodiversity loss. That connection is frequently approached by means of studies that aim to understand the response of species populations to changing environment.

The project MedSeaRise (https://3.basecamp.com/5459396/projects/35812230) foresees to identify sets of impacts deriving from the progressive increase of sea level, due to global warming, and among them we are focusing also on those affecting ecosystems, their management and preservation.

At this stage of the project, the Partners have identified the stakeholders that are going to be involved in the case studies. Those case studies cover roughly six different areas of the Mediterranean coasts and sea.

Thanks to those case studies and the methodology, we are going to delvelop, MedSeaRise is expected to contribute to minimize the impact of climate change in the Mediterranean supporting decision makers in increasing the ecosystem resilience, if this is possible, especially lowering the anthropic pressure where it is synergic with climate change in stressing threatened species.

As far as I know the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, I think that MedSeaRise outputs could support the theory of change declared in the GBF. In fact, the knowledge produced in MedSeaRise, which will be available to the community through the case studies, it is going to add a tile on the awareness required to recognizes that urgent actions are required to limit biodiversity loss and consequent impacts.

With best regards,
Dario

[Dario Giaiotti]

Dear Sofia,

continuing our discussion on this topic, here I am to report that MedSeaRise project has organized the first set of data, on climate change scenarios in the Mediterranean, which are going to be inputs for case studies on sea level rise impacts.

At present, time series of monthly averages of air temperature, precipitation and sea level are available for each of the selected RCP future scenarios on six Mediterranean coastal areas.

That information has been extracted from a large set of numerical simulations, which are available thanks the CMIP6 (https://aims2.llnl.gov/search) and the Med-CORDEX (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/projections-cordex-domains-single-levels?tab=form) research initiatives.

Three main scenarios are considered in MedSeaRise, namely: RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. For each scenario, we computed the anomaly of all the variables with respect a reference period of a few decades representing the end of the XX century.

In my opinion, such numerical information, which is under evaluation of MedSeaRise partnership, contributes to enrich the base knowledge of the Natural Heritage Thematic Community.
Furthermore, recalling the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework 8th target, data coming from MedSeaRise can be considered supplemental relevant resources that can assist the implementation of the Framework.

Of course, data generated in the frame of the project are going to be release officially as MedSeaRise deliverables D.1.1.2 and D.2.1.2 and let available to the whole community.

Here is an examples of the data available, reported as graphs. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/medsearise-interreg-euro-med-project-a6616a300_medsearise-naturalheritagemission-mediterranean-activity-7198958131563892736-2ObF?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop)

With best regards
Dario

[Maria Vives-Ingla]

Dear Dario,

Many thanks for introducing the #MedSeaRise project in the conversation and sharing some thoughts on how it could contribute to the goals of this WG.
I’m Maria Vives-Ingla, a research technician from CREAF, one of the organisations coordinating the transfer activities in the Mission. I just finished my PhD on process-based models of the physiological and population responses to climate change of a widespread butterfly. So, I very much agree with you that species’ negative responses to climate change evidence how intimately linked climate change and biodiversity loss are.

The results and the working plan you shared are very relevant and promising! Can I ask you which coastal areas, sub-basins or municipalities you already have data from, and which other areas will you plan to add? If I understood it correctly, the sea level time series you shared was from Malta, and I saw you also published a temperature projection from Nice on LinkedIn.

Do you plan to use these plots and data for awareness-raising and stakeholder engagement? Are they ready to be used, or will you work a bit more on them before? I think some of our APs or other TPs working in the same coastal areas could be interested in checking and using these data and figures. I guess that for potential external users, these data will be available after the publication of the D.1.1.2 and D.2.1.2 you mentioned, right? So, when ready, let us know if you want our help in identifying these partners from the Mission that could be potentially interested in your results.

Then, thinking beyond the Mission, I also read you already identified a lot of stakeholders for the risk assessments you are planning to do during the project. Please, let us know if you would also like our help in identifying and contacting other key stakeholders from the Interreg Euro-MED programme. We could put you in contact with the Mission4SustainableTourism and the Mission4LivingAreas coordinators. For example, similar to our Mission’s Working Groups, the Mission4SustainableTourism launched their MED Clusters, and one of them works around the links between tourism activities and climate change, nature & biodiversity: https://sustainable-tourism.interreg-euro-med.eu/2024/06/17/the-sustainable-tourism-mission-just-released-three-orientation-papers/

Feel free to answer in the forum, so any other interested partner can jump in the conversation, or by email if you would like to discuss it more calmly with your assigned partners and us.

Best regards,

Maria Vives-Ingla (m.vives@creaf.uab.cat)
Annelies Broekman (a.broekman@creaf.uab.cat)

[Dario Giaiotti]

Dear Maria and Annelies,

I am very glad to get your reply to my posts and to read of your interest in the data MedSeaRise is sharing in the frame of the community.

Coming to your questions, the data we have collected and organized extends allover the Mediterranean area. So besides the geographical points, which are reported at the bottom of this post, that we have considered as a first set of locations where to focus the project objectives, we can extract the climate projection for any location over the Mediterranean.

Of course, models outputs have limited spatial resolution that we can approximately state to be about 10 km x 10 km. So the data for one specific location is an interpolation of the location neighbors model output values, but for marine and coastal areas they represent quite well the reality a part some very specific sites.

To generate input climate scenarios data, the approach adopted in MedSeaRise foresees the transfer of the project methodology to the whole Mediterranean and beyond, with a possibility to let available data to the Academy too. So if you need scenarios data for a specific area you are interested, we can provide them easily and promptly.

Available plots and data are going to be used for awareness-raising and stakeholder engagement and later to conduct case studies on sea level rise impacts. So they are ready to be used, but what is missing is the degree or reliability to be given to each model output. This is the added value MedSeaRise is going to give to the dataset, besides the methodology on how to use those data in the proper way according to the reliability. So far people have used those climate scenarios data as they are and at this stage of the project it is possible to do the same, if it is needed.

You are right, officially data will be released as part of the deliverable D.1.1.2 and the metadata carrying on information on those data reliability and uncertainty are going to be part of the deliverable D.2.1.1. Actually data are already available, because we started earlier in collecting and organizing them as expected in deliverable D.1.1.2. Deliverable D.2.1.2 is composed by subsets of numerical data already available in D.1.1.2, together with indexes, which are aimed to ease the practical application of the best practices in using data on climate scenarios available in D.1.1.2.

Of course, once those deliverables are released, your help in identifying partners from the Mission that could be potentially interested in MedSeaRise data and methodology is welcome. In fact, in WP3 we expect to foster the methodology extending its application to further stakeholders getting feedback from users to understand how much training and further capitalization actions are required to have an efficient and effective large scale transfer of the methodology. Your proposal to help us in identify stakeholders is a good idea. I consider it a booster to activities belonging to WP3. So we can proceed to share that opportunity among them.

In this phase of the project, further stakeholders are welcome if they are willing to get committed in the case studies, that is to share their information within MedSeaRise and participate to the works of the case study they will be involved in.

So, if you have in mind some potential interested people, please feel free to let them in contact with me and I will organize a video call to explain the details of the participation in case studies. Remind that we are working on both anthropic and ecosystem impacts.

Thanks again for the opportunity you are giving to MedSeaRise and for the very valuable work to amplify the projects results in the frame of Natural Heritage Mission.

With best regards,
Dario

P.S
To let potential interested people in contact with me use: (dario.giaiotti@arpa.fvg.it) ARPA FVG – PP2 in MedSeaRise Project

Here is a list of geographical positions for which time series and plots are already available.
location id latitude [°N] longitude [°E] notes
LP1_00 40.636 22.942 Thessaloniki (EL); PRE, TAS
LP1_01 40.416 22.751 Point offshore in the Thermaic Gulf; ZOS
LP1_02 40.262 22.838 Point offshore in the Aegean Sea; ZOS
PP2_00 45.643 13.790 Trieste (IT); PRE, TAS
PP2_01 45.494 13.152 Point offshore in the North Adriatic Sea; ZOS
PP3_00 43.703 7.266 Nice (FR); PRE, TAS
PP3_01 42.569 7.347 Point offshore the Cote d’Azur; ZOS
PP4_00 42.420 18.768 Kotor (ME); PRE, TAS
PP4_01 42.165 18.401 Point offshore in the South Adriatic Sea; ZOS
PP5_00 41.388 2.158 Barcelona (ES); PRE, TAS
PP5_01 41.226 2.472 Point offshore in the Balearic Sea; ZOS
PP6_00 35.899 14.514 Valletta (MT); PRE, TAS
PP6_01 36.122 14.735 Point offshore the coastline of Malta; ZOS

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