Effects of climate change on bird habitats around the Irish Sea (ECHOES)

Description:

The ECHOES project seeks to address how climate change impacts coastal bird habitats of the Irish Sea, and what effect this could have on our society, economy, and shared ecosystems. Innovative scientific approaches are used to model the behaviour and distribution of Greenland White-fronted goose and Eurasian Curlew. The project develops online tools and services to help site managers understand how to best mitigate the potential impacts of climate change on their sites.

The specific aims of the project are:

• Promote climate change awareness, adaptation, risk prevention and management, and, in doing so, stimulate and encourage environmental citizenship
• Increase the evidence-base for the protection of these coastal areas and the decision-making/strategies required to manage them effectively for future generations
• Increase knowledge of climate change adaptation for the Irish sea and coastal communities based on lessons learned through detailed study of Greenland White-fronted geese and Eurasian Curlew
• Provide an online platform and tools to assist policymakers, managers and users of these coastal environments to better plan for, adapt to and manage the potential impacts of climate change
• Increase levels of knowledge of adaptation to climate change amongst communities and stakeholders in the Irish Sea coastlines by promoting cross-border and long-term collaboration amongst stakeholders.

Project activities include:

• Habitat and land cover mapping, from open source Earth Observation imagery based on a machine learning approach, for the areas studied in both Ireland and Wales
• Bird tracking and associated vegetation surveys, to understand how selective and mobile birds are, especially where they are using patchy habitats and are suffering from different pressures
• Bird species distribution modelling across coastal habitats, to assesses the relationship between species and environmental data to understand and predict the distribution of species in both current and future geographic space
• Climate projections, to combine information on climate change scenarios with bio-climatic data to assess the vulnerability of the existing habitats
• Stakeholder engagement, to raise awareness of the potential impacts of climate change and shared challenges and opportunities
• Web Platform – Tools Design and Development, to enable a better understanding of the impacts of climate change on coastal habitats along the Irish Sea, as well as provide tools for users to make more informed decisions and manage actions for these sites.

Project information

Lead

Aberystwyth University

Partners

University College Cork

Compass Informatics

British Trust for Ornithology

Geo Smart Decisions

 

Source of funding

Programme 2014 - 2020 INTERREG V-A United Kingdom - Ireland (Ireland - Wales)