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Project aims and visions

Project Aims

Laboratory SESAME aims to assess and predict changes in the Southern European Seas (Mediterranean and Black Sea) ecosystems and in their ability to provide key goods and services with high societal importance, such as tourism, fisheries, ecosystem biodiversity and mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration in water and sediments. The Mediterranean and Black Sea, are unique and evolve rapidly with large interannual to decadal 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 Mediterranean and Black Sea as a coupled climatic/ecosystem entity, 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 and disseminated to all levels of society. Existing information, models, simulations and scenarios are combined under several Work Packages (WPs). (More)

Project Visions

Laboratory SESAME considers the Mediterranean and Black Sea and the straits that connect the various basins as one interconnected large 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 foster 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 centennial time scale, ranging from the past 50 years to the next 50 years.

SESAME performs innovative research, while it aims to effectively align ambition, critical mass, multidisciplinarity and integration.

Concerning ambition, SESAME sets, for the first time, a joint and coordinated study of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and establishes a modelling and observational network beyond country and basin borders.
Concerning critical mass, SESAME effectively mobilizes large human and material resources in the two basins.
Concerning multidisciplinarity, SESAME provides innovative research in observational and numerical modelling fields and contributes further to socio-economic research using international collaboration in the field of marine ecosystems.
Finally, concerning integration, SESAME bridges the gap between natural and socio-economic sciences in view of the assessment of the ecosystems' ability to provide goods and services.