Sustainable Management of Marine Resources

SMMR-Net Webinar "Setting thresholds for good status in marine ecosystem management"
2025-04-22 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London)
The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources (SMMR) Network is excited to host another free Lunchtime Webinar!
This month Lorna McKellar, Doctoral Researcher at the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University will give an insight into:
Setting thresholds for good status in marine ecosystem management
Values which distinguish between good and not good ecosystem states, or ‘thresholds’, are required under international marine management legislation to assess the condition of marine areas and evaluate progress towards achieving biodiversity objectives. There are numerous methods being used to estimate thresholds which can result in inconsistent interpretations of what is defined as ‘good’. Simultaneously, despite a range of methods being available, there are a lack of thresholds in place for many ecosystem components, which means that full ecosystem assessments are often not completed. A framework for setting reliable, accurate thresholds, consistently across different marine indicators and robustly in the face of limited data, is needed to fill these gaps.
To inform this framework, the statistical robustness of four methods for setting thresholds for good status were evaluated using simulated indicator data, to determine the impact of limited data on thresholds using different methods. The most statistically robust and reliable methods for setting thresholds were carried forward and applied to empirical datasets to estimate thresholds and outline an approach for determining the probability of a system being in good status for different marine systems, using minimally impacted reference conditions. Finally, a structured expert elicitation approach (IDEA protocol) was used to determine how expert opinion could be used in a structured format to estimate thresholds for good status and evaluate the robustness of this method in place of quantitative approaches. Outlining clear approaches for estimating thresholds for good status, along with the assumptions as to how they define ‘good’, will aid consistent, reliable, and robust setting of thresholds for good status to inform environmental objectives under marine management legislation.
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SMMR-Net Webinar "Natural capital approaches to understanding ecosystem service delivery"
2025-04-23 13:00 - 14:00
The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources (SMMR) Network is excited to host another free Lunchtime Webinar!
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This month Louise Anderson and Sam Matthews from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) will give an insight into:
New evidence and visualisations for a universal Asset Service Matrix that informs natural capital approaches to understanding ecosystem service delivery
In a natural capital-based framework, understanding the ecosystem services provided by the environment and its assets (habitats, species, and processes) is crucial to informing management decision-making. An asset-service matrix (ASM) is a tool used in natural capital approaches to describe and catalogue linkages between natural assets and the ecosystem services that they provide.
JNCC’s ‘universal’ ASM unifies ecosystem service – asset evidence links for UK marine ecosystems with a common crosswalk for classification and a standardised tool to assemble linkages and enable consistent, comparable outputs.
The uASM tool was first released in 2023. Now, in collaboration with the Marine Biological Association (MBA), we have developed a spatial visualisation of potential ecosystem service provision across UK subtidal habitats. The uASM has also had its first major evidence update since its launch, with over 11,800 new ecosystem service – asset linkages from UK marine habitats and species, representing an over 180% increase in the number of linkages.
In this talk, we will discuss the recent updates and their applications to natural capital and ecosystem service approaches. This work supports marine natural capital approaches and accounting by providing an iterative, evidence-driven tool to understand potential ecosystem service provision. The uASM tool supports decisionmakers and stakeholders to create bespoke ASMs, account for the full range of known services, and apply knowledge on varying levels of service delivery by marine assets.
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Image credits: Unsplash

SMMR-Net Webinar "Marine Planning Process in the United Kingdom"
2025-06-11 12:00 - 13:00
The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources (SMMR) Network is excited to host another free Lunchtime Webinar!
This month Gina Yannitell Reinhardt and Pat Danahey Janin, from the University of Essex (Department of Government) will give an insight into:
Stakeholder perceptions of the Marine Planning Process in the United Kingdom: 4 Case Studies
Stakeholder engagement is presented as key to all stages of the marine planning process from setting priorities to evaluating and choosing plan options, to enforcement and finally to assessing overall effectiveness.1 Stakeholders who are involved in the elaboration of marine plans are more likely to support, engage with, or follow the rules established through this process.2 This research draws on 71 stakeholder interviews that accompanied a survey on marine values, preferences and trade-offs carried out within the framework of the multidisciplinary Marine Spatial Planning Addressing Climate Effects project (MSPACE). A qualitative thematic analysis of stakeholder perceptions of marine planning stakeholder engagement across the four UK nations (Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England) brings forth the lived stakeholder experience of the iterative and on-going engagement process.

Our research reveals the influence governance structures have on the stakeholder engagement process itself affecting the stakeholders’ perception of strategic coherence around marine management, bureaucratic processes, internal and external strains on the activity and funding levels for management and monitoring. While the UK stakeholders interviewed appreciate the opportunity to participate and acknowledge the evidence-based process and efforts, they do not think stakeholder engagement is working across the board for all actors. Key areas of concern lie within the process itself, the variable levels of engagement, the risk and arbitration of conflict, and limited resources. This study illustrates the importance of overall governance structures and the variability of stakeholder engagement across nations with particular contextual challenges in stakeholder engagement for each nation case.
1. Zaucha, J. & Kreiner, A. Engagement of stakeholders in the marine/maritime spatial planning process. Mar. Policy 132, 103394 (2021).
2. Pomeroy, R. & Douvere, F. The engagement of stakeholders in the marine spatial planning process. Mar. Policy 32, 816–822 (2008).

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SMMR-Net Webinar "Evaluating Marine (Spatial) Planning"
2025-09-08 13:00 - 14:00
The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources (SMMR) Network is excited to host another free Lunchtime Webinar!
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This month Dr Tim Stojanovic, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development and Geography at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, will give an insight into:
Evaluating Marine (Spatial) Planning
Marine (Spatial) Planning (MSP) is now entering a second iteration in many parts of the world, so now is an ideal time to reflect on what has been learned. In the first part of this seminar I will review what marine plans have aimed to achieve. In the main part of the seminar, I will outline five key major theoretical approaches which have been used to review marine planning, and what they reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of MSP in different nations.
Stojanovic, T., and K. Gee (2020) Governance as a framework to theorise and evaluate marine planning. Marine Policy 120: 104115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104115

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SMMR-Net Webinar "Precarious livelihoods in changing oceans"
2025-10-07 13:00 - 14:00
The Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources (SMMR) Network is excited to host another free Lunchtime Webinar!
This month Dr Neil Banas, Oceanographer and Mathematical Ecologist at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, will give an insight into:
Precarious livelihoods in changing oceans: Salmon, sandeels, plankton, and people
Marine foragers from zooplankton to whales are, almost by definition, dependent on a patchwork of resources: often a shifting assemblage of species; patchy and unpredictable in space; seasonal or ephemeral in time. Life for a North Sea sandeel, in other words, subsisting on dimly seen patches of more than a dozen plankton species, is something like precarious employment or the gig economy: like a driver who relies on unpredictable calls from four taxi and food-delivery companies simultaneously.
“Precarity” and foraging lifeways are old subjects in ethnography and anthropology, and marine scientists might find inspiration in how contemporary scholars in the humanities like Anna Tsing (“The Mushroom at the End of the World”, 2015) link these conditions and strategies to the new world of the Anthropocene. In this talk I will sketch how Tsing’s work on precarity and problems of scale might change our perspective on climate-driven declines in the food chain supporting UK wild salmon and seabirds, suggest new quantitative modelling approaches, and call our attention to possible refugia and modes of resilience.

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