Investigating food web effects due to man-made structures using Coupled Spatial Modelling (COSM)

Duration: 2013-2017

PI: Dr. Chris Lynam (CEFAS, UK)

Project website: https://www.insitenorthsea.org/projects/cosm/

Project summary

Is there an influence of man-made structures on ecosystem structure and functioning at the scale of the North Sea?

COSM will address this question by developing a spatio-temporally dynamic model of the food web coupled directly with a Geographic Information System (GIS). In this way, spatial information on habitat type (substrates and bathymetry), environment (temperature, salinity, stratification, primary production) and pressure data (fishing) will be used to model the distribution of benthic and pelagic ecosystem components from infauna to seabirds

EII roles

Spatial-temporal modelling support, GIS, big data processing, software development.

The Ecospace Transects Plugin developed under COSM-INSITE is now part of the Ecopath with Ecosim food web modelling approach, version 6.6+

Relevant publications

@techreport{cosm_insite_2017,

title = {Investigating food web effects due to man-made structures using COupled Spatial Modelling (COSM)},

author = {C. Lynam and J. Steenbeek and S. Mackinson and C. Garcia and S.R. Wright and P. Posen and S. Lincoln and M. Kirby},

url = {https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static.insitenorthsea.org/files/COSM_final_report_v2.0.pdf},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-11-01},

number = {C6236},

address = {Lowestoft, UK},

institution = {Centre for Environment Fisheries \& Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)},

type = {Final deliverable},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {techreport}

}