The deep-sea represents a frontier for human exploration and exploitation (e.g., fisheries; mining for natural resources such as oil, gas, or minerals; bioprospecting). As such, there is a growing imperative to find a sustainable balance between the utilization of deep-sea resources and preserving the holistic functioning of these ecosystems. This will inevitably depend on developing robust scientific knowledge of the current status of deep-sea habitats and how they respond to both, environmental and anthropogenically-driven variability. In turn, this information should define management plans that ensure a combination of profitable economic gain and reduced impact of extractive industries, with s strong emphasis on conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Thus, in the forthcoming years, ecological monitoring technologies will have to be developed alongside appropriate strategies to collect and analyse marine data to obtain indicators to support marine protection planning and restoration goals.
This Special Issue will take advantage of the momentum in which deep-sea exploration and monitoring technologies are gaining broad relevance as identified by the UN Ocean Decade Initiative. It will focus on the latest updated procedures for biological and environmental data collection and elaboration for the development and quantification of ecological indicators. The aim is to present reliable metrics of deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystem functioning for assessing the impact of anthropogenic activities in industrially impacted sites (e.g., oil/gas and mining extractions, fishing grounds), Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs), Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs), Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Specifically, we will attempt to address the following questions:
1. Which are the best types of sensors (and sensor carriers), and how should they be combined in smart payloads and data sampling strategies for studying species niches and life traits?
2. How to expand organism detection beyond the reach of optoacoustic imaging (e.g., Passive Acoustic Monitoring and omics sensor technologies)?
3. Which are the best strategies for studying and monitoring the ecosystem functioning at different spatiotemporal scales (considering the inter-connected nature of the benthic and pelagic zones) and the response of communities to anthropic impacts across habitat clines?
4. How to process the multidisciplinary biological and environmental information into complex ecological indicators as metrics to determine the pristine, impacted and restored statuses of ecosystems?
5. How do we define and use data sets to increase marine restoration efforts?
6. How to harmonize the acquired multidisciplinary biological and environmental information within the international synergistic efforts to identify monitoring variables, as detected by the Marine Spatial Planning and Good Environmental Status (GES) descriptors of the European Union’s Marine Framework Strategy Directive (MFSD), as well as within the Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) by the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and the key ecosystem attributes by the Society for Ecological Restoration SER, among others?
7. How to validate the performance of these indicators derived by smart technologies as effective tools for ecological monitoring with other sampling methodologies (e.g. with fishery-based numbers)?
The deep-sea represents a frontier for human exploration and exploitation (e.g., fisheries; mining for natural resources such as oil, gas, or minerals; bioprospecting). As such, there is a growing imperative to find a sustainable balance between the utilization of deep-sea resources and preserving the holistic functioning of these ecosystems. This will inevitably depend on developing robust scientific knowledge of the current status of deep-sea habitats and how they respond to both, environmental and anthropogenically-driven variability. In turn, this information should define management plans that ensure a combination of profitable economic gain and reduced impact of extractive industries, with s strong emphasis on conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Thus, in the forthcoming years, ecological monitoring technologies will have to be developed alongside appropriate strategies to collect and analyse marine data to obtain indicators to support marine protection planning and restoration goals.
This Special Issue will take advantage of the momentum in which deep-sea exploration and monitoring technologies are gaining broad relevance as identified by the UN Ocean Decade Initiative. It will focus on the latest updated procedures for biological and environmental data collection and elaboration for the development and quantification of ecological indicators. The aim is to present reliable metrics of deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystem functioning for assessing the impact of anthropogenic activities in industrially impacted sites (e.g., oil/gas and mining extractions, fishing grounds), Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs), Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs), Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Specifically, we will attempt to address the following questions:
1. Which are the best types of sensors (and sensor carriers), and how should they be combined in smart payloads and data sampling strategies for studying species niches and life traits?
2. How to expand organism detection beyond the reach of optoacoustic imaging (e.g., Passive Acoustic Monitoring and omics sensor technologies)?
3. Which are the best strategies for studying and monitoring the ecosystem functioning at different spatiotemporal scales (considering the inter-connected nature of the benthic and pelagic zones) and the response of communities to anthropic impacts across habitat clines?
4. How to process the multidisciplinary biological and environmental information into complex ecological indicators as metrics to determine the pristine, impacted and restored statuses of ecosystems?
5. How do we define and use data sets to increase marine restoration efforts?
6. How to harmonize the acquired multidisciplinary biological and environmental information within the international synergistic efforts to identify monitoring variables, as detected by the Marine Spatial Planning and Good Environmental Status (GES) descriptors of the European Union’s Marine Framework Strategy Directive (MFSD), as well as within the Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) by the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and the key ecosystem attributes by the Society for Ecological Restoration SER, among others?
7. How to validate the performance of these indicators derived by smart technologies as effective tools for ecological monitoring with other sampling methodologies (e.g. with fishery-based numbers)?