December 2024 – PhD day
A new edition of iMARES PhD day with lots of interesting talks about student projects and discussions. And it follows with a nice pre-hollidays lunch!
A new edition of iMARES PhD day with lots of interesting talks about student projects and discussions. And it follows with a nice pre-hollidays lunch!
Another year, we organized an Ecopath with Ecosim course at the ICM-CSIC, in collaboration with Ecopath International Research Initiative, and funded by ongoing projects Oceans Acción, PROOCEANS, GES4SEAS, MarinePlan, Actnow, and EcoScopium.
22 people attended from different countries and with different research questions to tackle with EwE. We had a week of great discussions and learning, and we are thrilled with the interest shown by all participants!
The first week of November 2024 we have held a fantastic species distributions modelling course at ICM-CSIC with the title “User friendly tools for spatial-temporal species distribution models“, by Alba Fuster-Alonso, Jorge Mestre-Tomás, Jazel Ouled-Cheikh, and Maria Grazia Pennino.
This course has been organized under the Spanish Project ProOceans, and the new R package Glossa has been presented and tested!
Modelling courses to study the effects of human activities on marine ecosystems are back at the ICM!
During the week of the 11th to the 15th of December 2023, the ICM hosted, once again, an ecosystem modelling course to teach participants from different institutions around the world how to use modelling techniques to study the effects of human activities and climate change on marine ecosystems.
In total, 20 participants from 13 countries (Romania, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Holland, Greece, Italy and France) got together to learn about the ecosystem modelling approach Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE,). This course, organized under 7 European and National projects (Ges4Seas, ActNow, MarinePlan, FutureMares, EcoScope, Oceans+, and ProOceans), aimed to help participants with their modelling-related tasks, work packages and deliverables.
Ecosystem modelling courses were frequently taught at ICM before 2019, and starting with this course, the intention is to organize them again on annual basis. These courses are a great opportunity for the scientific community to get introduced to one of the most applied ecological modelling tools in the world, while meeting participants from all over the world and learn about the recent developments of the approach.
A three-day introductory course was followed by a two-day advanced course. The introductory course discussed basic concepts and procedures modelling aquatic ecosystems using the EwE approach. Participants were provided with the principles behind EwE, and how to design, parameterize and analyze an ecological model. Introductory concepts of the temporal module Ecosim and the spatial-temporal module Ecospace were presented.
The advanced course discussed in-depth principles of Ecospace. Special focus was paid to how to use EwE to study the impacts of cumulative stressors, including the impact of climate change, and the effects of alternative management options of marine resources to move towards adaptation and mitigation of human activities under global change.
The course was taught by a team of core scientists behind EwE: Villy Christensen (University of British Columbia, Canada), Jeroen Steenbeek (Ecopath International Initiative, Spain) and Marta Coll (Institute of Marine Science, Spain). Three teaching assistants completed the team: Elena Lloret and Dorota Szalaj, from ICM, and Riikka Puntilla-Dodd, from Åbo Akademi University (Finland).
We have celebrated a PhD day in our group with lots of interesting talks about student projects and discussions. Especial connections from Australia, Norway and USA have been a treat.
The 5th Symposium about the Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Ocean was held Bergen, Norway, from the 17th to the 21st of April 2023, organized by ICES and PICES.
We participated extensively contributing with several oral presentations and posters. It was a very inspiring week!
We hold the first Master’s student day! We had great presentations by 19 master students that have finished their work during 2021-2022 or are starting their projects in 2022-2023.
Time | Year | Name | Supervisors | Title |
9.00-9.15 | 2022 | Miriam Gimeno | Fran Ramírez / Joan Giménez | Climate and human impacts on global penguin hotspots: current assessments for future conservation. |
9.20-9.35 | 2022 | Laia Rosell | Fran Ramírez | A systematic review and meta-analysis of the pollutant exposure (POPs and trace elements) by penguin through the Southern Hemisphere. |
9.40-9.55 | 2022 | Marc Vez | Joan Navarro / Joan Giménez | Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the foraging ecology of an opportunistic predator inhabiting urban environments. |
10.00-10.15 | 2022 | Ana Fernández | Joan Navarro / Joan Giménez | Spatial variability of Hg values in a demersal mesopredator along the western Mediterranean Sea. |
10.20-10.35 | 2022 | Luca Francotte | Joan Giménez / Joan Navarro | Long-term changes in the feeding habits of swordfish in the western Mediterranean Sea. |
10.40-10.55 | 2022 | Martín Barreiros | Valerio Sbragaglia | Analysis of fishing in the MPAs of the Spanish Mediterranean (comparison between recreational and professional fishing) |
11.00-11.25 | Cofee Break | |||
11.25-11.30 | 2023 | Mar Pardo | Joan Giménez / Marta Coll | Feeding ecology of age-0 bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Valencia |
11.35-11.40 | 2023 | Laura Sanz | Joan Navarro / Nixon | Creels as a low-impact alternative to trawling to fish deep-sea Norway lobster. |
11.45-11.50 | 2023 | Ana Baeza | Francisco Ramírez /Joan Navarro | Urban gulls as sentinels of Hg pollution in urban marine environments. |
11.55-12.00 | 2023 | Angela Loring | Joan Navarro / Joan Giménez | Unravelling the causes of mortality in razorbills wintering in the Alborán Sea |
12.05-12.10 | 2023 | Joana Domingo | Joan Navarro | Distribución y selección de lugares de nidificación de un depredador oportunista presente en ecosistemas urbanos. |
12.15-12.20 | 2023 | Sofía Diéguez | Maria Bas | Canvis en la presència d’espècies marines en el registre zooarqueològic de l’Hemisferi Sud com a mètode de validació de models de distribució d’espècies marines en el passat. |
12.25-12.30 | 2023 | Aleix Ferrer | Fran Ramírez | Uso de hábitat y ecología trófica de la gaviota de Audouin en el mediterráneo occidental. Màster en Teledeccion y GIS |
12.35-12.40 | 2023 | Núria Bosch | Fran Ramírez / Joan Giménez | Facing a warming Antarctic Ocean: Penguin population responses to increasing water temperatures and sea ice retreat. |
12.45-12.50 | 2023 | Estella Carbonell | Marta Coll / Miquel Ortega | Historical analysis of the socio-ecological system associated with the Ebro Delta purse seine fishery |
12.55-13.00 | 2023 | María Begoña Cobo | Odei García-Garin / Marta Coll | Microplastic modelling through the food web: The Delta de l’Ebre as a study case. |
13.05-13.10 | 2023 | Andrés Moreira | Odei García-Garin / Diego Páez | Assessing the presence of microplastics in Galapagos Sea Lions’ scats as a bioindicator of pollution in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. |
13.15-13.20 | 2023 | Núria González | Odei García-Garin / Manel Gazo | Presència de microplàstics en els continguts estomacals d’una espècie de tauró bentònic en zones de canyons submarins del Golf de Lleó: la moixina (Galeus melastomus) com a cas d’estudi. |
13.25-13.30 | 2023 | Lara Fazzari | Valerio Sbragaglia | Public attention to invasive alien species in the Mediterranean Sea |
Our group participated intensively at the Small Pelagic Fish ICES/PICES conference in Lisbon. We participating giving a keynote, an invited talk, several regular talks and presented various posters.
The conference was exciting and was great to meet in person several friends and colleagues. Looking forward to future events!
The new project MarinePlan just started. Three 3 exciting years are waiting for us!
The main aim is to develop improved transdisciplinary science for effective ecosystem-based maritime spatial planning and conservation in European Seas.