Press Release: Successful MarinERA Call for Proposals: €4.6M directly granted to five collaborative research projects across seven countries.
The MarinERA call for proposals “Regional Drivers of Ecosystem Change – the measurement, modelling and prediction of ecosystem change” focused on changes in marine ecosystems and functional biodiversity in relation to global change and other anthropogenic impacts. “The North Sea, Channel and adjacent areas”, and “the Mediterranean and exchanges with adjacent basins” were identified as geographical areas of potential interest.
The five funded collaborative research projects will address the following topics (see outlines below):
- Ecosystem change in the north sea: processes, drivers, future scenarios;
- Inter-basin exchange in the changing Mediterranean Sea: Impact on the ecosystem in the vicinity of the Straits connecting the Mediterranean Sea with adjacent Basins;
- Decadal scale variability of the Mediterranean Ecosystem;
- Marine phylogeographic structuring during climate change;
- Regional drivers of ecosystem change and its influence on deep-sea populations in the Mediterranean.
Five Funding Partners took part in the MarinERA Call:
- German Juelich Research Centre GmBH Project Management Organisation Julich (FZJ-PTJ)
- Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) - In association with and representing the General secretariat for research and technology, Ministry of Development (GSRT)
- Research Council of Norway (RCN)
- Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
- Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIIN)
Research teams from the Netherlands and UK acquired matching funding to join one of the consortia.
The Funding Partners designed procedures which allowed them to (i) comply with their national rules whilst (ii) completing the call exercise (from opening of the call to the final funding decision and negotiation) within less than 7 months. Twenty one proposals (for a total requested budget of € 12M) were received through a one stage submission procedure. In June four international experts evaluated and ranked the eligible proposals (20). In July the funding decision were made by the Funding Partners. Negotiations were completed by the end of September.
“We (Funding Partners) were positively surprised by the quality of the proposals” noted Beatriz Morales Nin (MICIIN - Spain), “12 were worthy of being funded”. As a consequence the total grant for funding reached €4.6M, exceeding by €1M the envelop that had originally been provisioned by Funding Partners. Five projects will be funded.
A final report profiling the success of the call procedure will present the lessons learned as well as some of the patterns identified regarding how the research community tackles available sources of funding or instruments: for instance, in Portugal most of the applicants were young researchers.
"The MarinERA Call has been a very positive exercise for us (Programme Managers)”, says Nina Hedlund (RCN – Norway, responsible for MarinERA Call Secretariat), “it demonstrated that barriers to cooperation amongst European Funding Agencies can successfully be overcome without any heavy administration”.
A common kick-off meeting for the funded projects will be organised early 2009, gathering Principals Investigators, members of their consortia and MarinERA partners.
Date: 03 October 2008
For further information, please contact: Maud Evrard – mevrard@esf.org
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Outlines of the projects funded further to MarinERA call for proposals
Ecosystem Change in the North Sea: Processes, Drivers, Future Scenarios (ECODRIVE) is designed to (i) provide a better understanding of potential climate change impacts (scenarios), (ii) construct usable climate change indicators, and (iii) improve the interface between science and policy formulation in terms of risk management as suggested by the European Science Foundation.
Participating countries: Germany, Norway, (the Netherlands, UK).
Inter-basin exchange in the changing Mediterranean Sea: Impact on the ecosystem in the vicinity of the Straits connecting the Mediterranean Sea with adjacent Basins (MedEX): will geographically "zoom" over theses areas and scientifically focus on the changing inter-basin exchange processes impacting the ecosystems. MedEX will complement existing knowledge on local ecosystem dynamics, especially in what concerns the processes that are on direct dependency on the exchange between the Mediterranean and adjacent seas (the north Atlantic and the Black Sea).
Participating countries: Greece, Portugal, Spain.
Decadal scale Variability of the Meditterranean Ecosystem: aims to lead to an improved understanding of the evolution of the Mediterranean Marine Ecosystem in decadal time scales, in order to proceed to more reliable predictions in the context of currently evolving anthropogenic climatic change.
Participating countries: Greece, Spain.
Marine phylogeographic structuring during climate change: the signature of leading and rear edge of range shifting populations: aims to monitor, sample and genotype a number of target species, in predetermined rocky-shore stations in the Mediterranean and along West Europe, with special attention to species having distributional limits within this area.
Participating countries: Germany, Portugal, Norway, Spain.
Regional Drivers of Ecosystem Change and its Influence on Deep-Sea populations in the Mediterranean – ReDEco: This project focuses on key drivers of climate change (such as temperature changes, shifts in surface primary productivity, cold water cascading etc.) and examines their impact on deep-sea ecosystems. ReDEco will combine previously collected data with new information from a diverse array of study sites in the Mediterranean to allow insights into long-term change in deep-sea ecosystems on a large scale.
Participating countries: Greece, Portugal, Spain.
