Project update | 10 January 2022
The BiCOME project kicks-off!
Last October marked the launch of the Biodiversity of the Coastal Ocean: Monitoring with Earth Observation (BiCOME) project, led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
BiCOME will be aiming to support scientific understanding through investigating how the community structure and function of coastal ecosystems will respond to a changing climate, and to support policy through monitoring at a European and international level.
With anthropogenic stressors like fishing, land and sea use, climate change and pollution rapidly increasing pressure on the natural environment, the project will look at the observation tools that can help researchers to better understand how ecosystems will respond.
The kick off meeting brought together the BiCOME team from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the University of Nantes, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and HYGEOS to introduce the project and plan for the future.
Dr Victor Martinez-Vicente, BiCOME Principal Investigator and PML Bio-Optical Oceanographer, said
“A changing climate and other anthropogenic stressors are putting important coastal ecosystems at risk across the globe. Understanding how these ecosystems will respond is key to guiding future action to protect and support them. It’s exciting to have kicked off this project, bringing together so much expertise from different organisations and looking forward to the future of BiCOME.”