Blue carbon data across Europe is patchy, making it difficult to develop effective and transversal policies to protect and restore blue carbon ecosystems. BluePaths will target the most significant data gaps, improving completeness and comparability across existing datasets, and address persistent uncertainties around lateral carbon fluxes and carbon budgets. It will identify the physical and biological conditions that determine whether restoration efforts succeed or fail in support of evidence-based site selection and restoration design. BluePaths will also assess the response of blue carbon ecosystems to a range of stressors, disturbances and climate-driven pressures to enhance understanding of their vulnerability and inform targeted conservation efforts.
Working across Ireland, Germany, Poland, Norway and Greece, including outermost regions and overseas territories, the project will maintain strong links to national, European and international decision-makers to ensure findings feed directly into management frameworks and policy processes.
Project partners:
Coordinated by Grace Cott (University College Dublin), Ireland
- University of Galway (Ireland) — Stengel, Dagmar
- Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) (Germany) — Zimmer, Martin
- Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany) — Balke, Thorsten
- Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland) — Kulinski, Karol
- Institute of Meteorology and Water Management – National Research Institute (Poland) — Zalewska, Tamara
- Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) (Norway) — Lindemann, Christian
- Møreforsking AS (Norway) — Rebours, Celine
- HCMR (self-financed) (Greece) — Eugenia Apostolaki