Our knowledge of marine ecosystems is fragmented, and our ability to predict the consequences of various natural and human changes in those ecosystems is limited. To manage the marine environment we need to understand change and consequences of change over large areas and long time periods. In this project we will develop a whole-ecosystem approach to understand changes in marine ecosystems around the UK, and the services they provide. Ecosystem services are the benefits that human society derives from the environment. These include food, recycling of materials and well-being. Coastal and shelf marine ecosystems are biodiverse and complex. They are highly productive, bringing huge benefits to humans. They are also under enormous pressure from human drivers such as fishing and climate change. The role of ecological structure in supporting key ecosystem services is not fully understood. Ecosystem services cannot be measured simply, and they vary in importance and magnitude according to how they are defined and observed. Understanding the ecosystem processes governing the way that services vary naturally, and in response to human pressures, requires a computer-modelling approach. NERC has good models, but these have limited ability to predict change in all but the lowest levels of marine food webs. Several well-respected modelling approaches focusing on food webs and larger organisms such as fish and mammals are commonly used, but gaps in knowledge hamper the inclusion of whole food webs into models that consider environmental and food web changes together. This is due to the way marine food webs have generally been studied in their separate components, at different scales or for specific applications such as biogeochemistry or fisheries. We propose a highly integrated project to make best use of existing data spread among different data holders across the UK and beyond. The integrated data will be used for analyses based on the latest ecological theories to inform and improve a range of models. These models will be used collectively to examine changes in ecosystems and potential future consequences for the services they deliver. The geographical focus of the programme will be the western seas, from the western English Channel, through the Celtic and Irish Seas, to western Scotland, although relevant data from other parts of UK waters will be included where appropriate. The novelty of this project is in using recent technologies to combine existing datasets into an integrated system with new experiments and field work for a genuine whole ecosystem analysis from phytoplankton to fisheries at whole shelf scales. We will include this new knowledge in models to examine how energy and materials move within food webs and how these are influenced by pressures. Model outputs will be translated to the services across the range of scales needed to inform management decisions. The consortium brings together 28 key researchers from 10 UK organisations to integrate existing knowledge, data, models and new information, to allow us to understand how marine ecosystems will change in the future, and how those changes will alter the benefits humans derive from the marine environment. The project is part of a larger programme, and results and outputs will be crucial for supporting development of NERC's biogeochemical models, and application of model development to test the impact and efficiency of potential management interventions. The legacies of this project will include tools and combined datasets that will place the UK far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of our ability to conduct meaningful ecological and food web studies, and a world-leading capability to analyse and model whole ecosystems and understand the consequences of change in terms of ecosystems services.

The large continental land masses are surrounded by extensive shallow (ca 100m depth) seas known as the 'shelf seas'. These act as the boundary between the massively perturbed terrestrial environment and the vast open ocean marine system, and have huge socio-economic importance. They are the primary regions of human marine resource exploitation, including both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources, recreation, trade and food production. Although comprising only about 5% of the global ocean surface area, the shelf seas provide 90% of the global fish catches which form an important source of food to much of the global population. They also play an important role in the ecosystem services provided by the oceans as a whole, in particular in storing carbon away from the atmosphere. Physical and biochemical processes in shelf seas influence the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and the subsequent storage of carbon in the deep ocean. Biological growth draws carbon out of the water, which is then replaced by carbon in CO2 from the atmosphere. In the shelf seas this growth is supported by terrestrial and open ocean sources of nutrients, implying intimate roles for both the terrestrial biosphere and the open ocean environment in regulating shelf sea climate services. The oceans can also be a major source or sink for other greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide (N2O), with the shallow shelf seas thought to play a key role. The spatial extent of the submerged continental shelves varies greatly. The NW European shelf sea is one of the largest and hence is likely to play a significant role in marine biogeochemical cycling, alongside providing a useful model for other systems However, even in this relatively well studied region, we lack a good understanding of the principal controls on the cycling of carbon and the major nutrient elements, nitrogen, phosphorous and silicon. Consequently it is also difficult to predict how the cycling of these elements and hence the carbon removal they support may be altered by ongoing and potential future global change. Our proposal aims to address these uncertainties through a comprehensive study of the cycling of the major nutrients and carbon throughout the water column over the NW European shelf sea system. Through close collaboration with a range of partners, we will undertake a year-long observation programme of the whole NW European continental shelf. We will measure the seawater concentrations of the major forms of carbon and nutrients. Combining these with physical water transports and measured transfer of gases (specifically CO2 and N2O) between the air and sea surface, we will quantify the major fluxes of nutrients and carbon between the shelf sea and both the adjacent deep ocean and atmosphere. This will definitively establish the role of this shelf system in the global carbon and nutrient cycles. We will also undertake 4 dedicated research cruises focused on understanding the seasonal cycle of biological and chemical processing of the different forms of the nutrients and carbon. We will measure the rates at which both the photosynthetic and consumer plankton incorporate nutrients and carbon into their cellular material, and subsequently how the combined activity of this biological/chemical system influences the cycling of the major elements. This will allow us to understand the ways in which the role of the shelf system in global cycles is maintained. The combined work delivered by both this proposal and the other programme workpackages will allow us to identify aspects of the NW European shelf system which may be susceptible to ongoing or future environmental changes. Such knowledge will provide both enhanced scientific understanding and improved predictive tools for policy makers and other stakeholders.

Summary The world's oceans and seas are home to highly diverse ecosystems and are characterised by the richness and abundance of species. Marine ecosystems provide a range of important services to mankind including food production, climate regulation through the cycling of carbon and other macronutrients, and a range of cultural values (e.g. recreation, tourism). They are in serious decline, primarily as a result of over-harvesting, pollution, and the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. In many locations, pressure from human activity and climatic changes have been associated with dramatic shifts in species composition, known as phase or regime shifts, which are often long lasting and difficult to reverse. Our understanding of the ecosystems of the UK's coastal and shelf seas is limited and many processes are poorly understood. For example changes in the physical and chemical environment (temperature, circulation, light availability, nutrients) mainly affect algal growth and thus impact the foodweb through bottom up control, whilst impacts such as harvesting act on fish which modify the biomass of lower trophic levels thus altering the controls from predation. However the relative roles of these processes and hence the extent to which environmental change cascades through marine food webs and affects ecosystem services requires elucidation. Our challenge is to further develop the existing ERSEM-NEMO modelling framework to better represent biodiversity-relevant processes, flows and feedbacks over a range of spatio-temporal scales, and to be able to model changes in function and the consequences of such changes in the context of ecosystem services. Furthermore these modelling tools need to be suitable for testing the impact of potential management solutions, such as marine conservation zones, on the structure and function of marine food webs across scales, and to explore the efficacy of specific indicators of good environmental status. A big challenge in modelling marine ecosystems is to capture the hierarchical nature of biodiversity and hence to explore a range of scales. This requires a scalable model system, with a traceable hierarchy whereby more complex foodweb structures can be systematically and coherently related to simple foodweb structures. The project will provide new modelling tools which provide estimates of crucial information to help resolve key scientific questions as well as provide a better understanding of the marine ecosystems as they respond to global change and direct anthropogenic pressures. The combination of predictive tools and new knowledge will underpin the development and implementation of marine policy and the implementation of marine forecast systems.

Building on a number of recent UK- and internationally funded initiatives, MSPACE is a highly integrated, multidisciplinary project conceptualised to drive forward the capability of the four UK nations in designing and implementing climate-smart marine spatial plans (MSP). This is a global ambition, as well one specific to the UK . MSPACE is underpinned by a vast catalogue of state-of-the-art marine climate change modelling projections for the environment, species and habitats, uniquely available to the consortium through existing expertise and partnerships, along with world leading modelling spatial meta-analysis methods. In MSPACE, we will use these methods, already tested in real life MSP development, and build on key partnerships with the UK policy and industry communities. By month 18 MSPACE will deliver a report on the vulnerabilities and opportunities that climate change presents to the near-term spatial management of the fisheries, aquaculture and marine conservation sectors across the UK Exclusive Economic Zone. This report will be delivered in liaison with the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) utilizing the latest MCCIP models for rapid delivery of evidence to support policy. Four carefully considered, contrasting real-life MSPs across the four nations of the UK will be used as case-studies throughout, enabling the application of the MSPACE tools to the complex and diverse national planning landscape. A detailed assessment of the needs and values of the planning stakeholder pools across the UK nations is also delivered early in MSPACE, and guides how climate change modelling analyses will be communicated through the project's planned stakeholder engagement activities, including economic scenario exploration and analyses. These products will feed into the main and final output of MSPACE: sets of case-study specific recommendations for the design of climate smart, economically viable and socially acceptable strategies that support sustainable co-uses of the marine environment, marine conservation, natural capital preservation and resource exploitation. Co-development of the recommendations, using surveys, multiple-criteria decision analyses and others methods with our case-study specific stakeholder pools, ensures they are relevant and responsive to the current and future priorities and needs of the regions covered by each plan, its stakeholders and governance structures. Lessons learnt from each case study will therefore be directly applicable to other MSPs in the same nation due to their specific tailoring. Significant potential for application of the overall lessons learned in MSPACE to the broader UK planning landscape, including MSPs for overseas territories, is ensured through the diversity of UK planning contexts explored in the project, and the consortium's strong links to key marine industries and marine planning communities. We have capitalised on these links since the conceptualisation of the project, and we will build on them through project delivery.

Climate policy should be informed by robust and credible information on the impacts of climate change across the global domain; a global perspective also places local and regional impacts in context, and helps identify potential 'hotspots' for further scientific investigation. The project assesses the global-scale impact of climate change using a range of linked impact modules and impact indicators, representing impacts on water resources, flood risk, food production, biodiversity and human health and well-being on land, at the coast, and at sea. The project will synthesise and aggregrate across sectors and regions, using a variety of approaches, and allow the identification of the risks of specific impacts occurring at different rates of climate change. The methodology and results of the project also provide a framework for the assessment of the impacts of defined climate policies. First, it allows detailed geographically-explicit assessments of specific climate scenarios or climate policies, using the suite of linked models. Second, it allows the more rapid assessment of a very large number of climate outcomes (based for example on a probabilistic assessment of the climate effects of an emissions policy) using regionalised functions relating climate impact to indices of climate forcing. The project will be undertaken by a consortium of twelve lead partners, all with international reputations in the field of climate impact assessment.