NIOZ science plan 2020-2025
Critical outstanding issues concerning Our Ocean, Our Coast, and Our Future
The complex functioning of marine systems continues to trigger scientific curiosity.
Introduction
Our oceans and seas cover approximately 70% of our planet and over 50% of the human population lives near the coast or along river deltas. The oceans play a key role in ecological and biogeochemical processes at a global scale and in the climate system, yet remain the least known environment on earth. Marine systems (comprising the Open Ocean, shelf and coastal seas, and estuarine deltas) provide key ecosystem services including the provision of food, minerals, and energy, the sustenance of biodiversity and they facilitate transport. As a result, our coastlines and deltas host the economically most valuable ecosystems of our planet. The complex functioning of marine systems continues to trigger scientific curiosity, but the realization that they are changing rapidly, not in the least because of human activity, renders their understanding also of utmost societal relevance. These global changes include overfishing, destruction of shoreline habitats, sea level rise, ocean acidification, deoxygenation, eutrophication, plastification, warming and natural-resource extraction for which new ways of responsible exploitation (including dealing with the food and energy transition) are required. The resulting alteration of biogeochemical cycles, food webs, ocean currents and atmospheric systems puts marine life under increasing pressure. Unravelling the fundamental links and regionally varying feedbacks between the different components of the coupled global climate-marine (eco)system, both in the past and in the present is imperative for understanding how marine systems function. The NIOZ science plan 2014-2020 (Mission Blue Planet) focused on two broad themes: 1) The changing ocean system, past, present and future, and 2) Adaptability of the marine ecosystem in a changing world. With these themes, NIOZ addressed important outstanding scientific challenges, while at the same time providing society and industry with fundamental knowledge to improve sustainable use and management of the sea, often in close co-operation with private and public sector partners. While our understanding of the dynamics and biota in marine environments continuously improved, many questions still need to be answered to better understand the role of our oceans, coasts and deltas, and how these are influenced by current and future changes. This includes both an understanding of natural processes as well as the consequences of anthropogenic effects, such as improved knowledge of the impact of (relative) sea level change.
Marine systems provide key ecosystem services including the provision of food, minerals and energy.
NIOZ aspires to perform excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research.
In order to understand the physical and biochemical functioning of the various marine systems, including abiotic-biotic interaction, as well as the consequences of changes therein, we must better understand both local and global fluxes, notably land runoff, air-sea exchange, benthic-pelagic coupling and transport within the ocean, and including associated (micro)biological processes. Especially the different biological, chemical, physical and geological processes regulating these transfers must be better understood and predicted. Important lessons may be learned from Past Ocean dynamics, notably from warm intervals in the geological past that can be used as a future Earth analogue. Facing current challenges in marine research requires a truly multidisciplinary approach - an intrinsic capability of NIOZ. This endeavor will require to further unravel processes across different scales in time and space, i.e. from past to present to future, from nanoseconds to millennia and beyond, as well as from the tropics to polar regions, from the surface to the seafloor, from the deltas to deep sea and from molecules to ecosystems (from past to future, from local to global, and from individual components to complex systems). As an NWO institute, NIOZ operates from the axiom that it is our joint societal responsibility to ensure that our Oceans and our Coasts will be in good shape for Future generations. Therefore, NIOZ aspires to perform excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research addressing important scientific and societal questions pertinent to the functioning of our oceans and our coasts to ensure a sustainable future.
Facing current challenges in marine research requires a truly multidisciplinary approach.
Framework
Our research and strategic vision 2020-2025 framework involves critical scientific and societal issues concerning all marine systems; it concerns Our Ocean, Our Coast, and Our Future.
Our Vast Ocean: The (deep) oceans are the final frontier and constitute the largest unexplored areas of our planet. What is out there and what happens deep down? How has life evolved? Are there resources to be explored? And if so, how to do this sustainably and responsibly? What happens with pollution? What is going on far away in the ocean that affects our country and our planet? The oceans are the great climate regulators and hold more than 98% of all bioavailable carbon of the planet; minute changes in circulation can have larger effects than any human carbon (CO₂)mitigation effort. But what do we really know and understand of coupled oceanic-atmospheric carbon cycling?
Our Fragile Coasts: Wadden systems and deltas, but also coralline or rocky coasts globally are the ‘front yards’ of human settlements; they are highly diverse and experience the largest anthropogenic pressures. The consequences of these human and global pressures worldwide are poorly known, even in our own well-studied backyard, the North Sea, Wadden Sea and Dutch Delta. What is their resilience? Biodiversity? How do their changes impact society? How can we take responsible ownership? What can we learn from global comparisons?
Our Marine Future: The ocean and coastal seas are changing rapidly. What can we expect in the future? How can we learn from the past? How do marine systems and communities evolve? How can we make sustainable use of the seas? How can we assist in mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change?
In the Netherlands, NWO-NIOZ, the national oceanographic institute, in cooperation with Utrecht University, and connecting numerous (inter)national stakeholders, is uniquely positioned to contribute to answering these important questions for society and industry by performing scientifically excellent sea-going research. Concluding remarks The above is to be regarded as the NIOZ research rationale or Science Plan 2020-2025, and will be taken as inspiration for future NIOZ marine research projects in general, and including the to be established set of national marine research projects. Importantly, it paves the way for both the ‘business as usual’ competitive programs and projects, as well as national programs, also in view of maintaining a solid basis for individual - to group-based scientific excellence, a conditio sine qua non for NIOZ.