To go to the Scientists page, please click here
Project Aims and Visions
Project Aims
SESAME aims to evaluate and predict changes in the Mediterranean and Black Seas ecosystems and in their ability to provide key goods and services with high societal importance, such as tourism, fisheries, ecosystem biodiversity and climate change. The two seas are unique and evolve very rapidly, with large annual variability and abrupt fluctuations. For this reason, SESAME will merge economic and natural science in order to study the changes in the Western and Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea. To this end, it will bridge the gap between natural and socio-economic sciences in order to assess the ability of the ecosystems to sustain these essential functions.
The project provides an integrated, ecosystem-based approach, considering the two seas as a coupled ecosystem, with links and feedbacks to the World Ocean. The assessment of these changes is based on the identification of the major regime shifts in ecosystems that have taken place in the last 50 years.
SESAME provides a platform for training, education and outreach in an integrated manner, which will ensure that the scientific results are translated to all levels of society. Existing information, models, simulations and scenarios are combined under several Work Packages (WPs).
Project Visions
SESAME considers the Mediterranean and Black Sea and the straits that connect the various basins as one interconnected system, with comparisons over a wide environmental spectrum. The compilation of existing data and newly collected information is used over the whole system scale to better understand past, present and future environmental changes and their impacts on society.
It is an effort dedicated to increase Europe's scientific capacity to face major societal needs and to encourage multidisciplinary collaborations including the broadest range of Mediterranean and Black Sea countries inside and outside the EU.
SESAME's innovation lies in its design, scope and focus, strongly reflected in the close merging of natural and economic sciences and the choice of a wide time scale, ranging from the past five decades to the next five to come.
- 22/02/2010 :
Ph.D. positions at the Institute of Biology, University of Southern Denmark - 17/02/2010 :
ClimECO2 - International Summer School co-organized by IUEM, IMBER and Europole Mer, 23-27 August 2010, Brest, France - 11/02/2010 :
Official Annual Conference of the European Ocean Energy Association, Brussels, Belgium, 6-7 May 2010 - 03/02/2010 :
14th International Conference on Harmful Algae, Hersonissos, Crete, Greece, 1-5 November 2010 - 13/01/2010 :
EGU General Assembly, 2-7 May 2010, Vienna, Austria - 13/01/2010 :
IMBER IMBIZO ll: Integrating biogeochemistry and ecosystems in a changing ocean: Regional comparisons, 10-14 October 2010, Crete, Greece - 16/11/2009 :
Oceans Past III: Stories from the sea-history of marine animal populations and their exploitation: Call for papers - 23/06/2009 :
Rising ocean temperatures near worst-case predictions - 16/06/2009 :
International Conference on Coastal Conservation and Management in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, 11-17 April 2010, Cascais, Portugal - 11/06/2009 :
39th CIESM Congress - Venice, Italy, 10 - 14 May 2010 - 09/06/2009 :
Report of the Stakeholders Conference, Maritime Day, Rome, Italy, 19-20 May 2009 - 07/04/2009 :
The White Paper: Plans to prepare Europe for climate change - 07/04/2009 :
Impacts of Europe's changing climate: 2008 indicator-based assessment report - 07/04/2009 :
CIESM Atlas of Exotic Macrophytes in the Mediterranean
