INSTITUTE OF NATURAL SCIENCES
Operational Directorate Natural Environment
MARECO – Marine Ecology and Management
Belgian National Gravel Bed Monitoring In the framework of the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive, MARECO is responsible for the design and implementation of the national monitoring program on seafloor integrity and biodiversity in natural gravel bed biotopes, classified as a geogenic reef under the EU Habitats Directive. This multidisciplinary monitoring program exploits underwater remote sensing…
OUTFLOW Quantifying the cOntribUTion of Fouling fauna to the Local carbon budget of an Offshore Wind farm OUTFLOW investigates how the presence of large densities of fouling fauna on wind turbines in offshore wind farms affect the spatial distribution of organic matter at the local and regional scale. These organisms filter large quantities of organic…
FaCE-IT Functional biodiversity in a Changing sedimentary Environment: Implications for biogeochemistry and food webs in a managerial setting Coastal ecosystems are facing many pressures affecting ecosystem health. Major human activities include the installation of offshore wind farms (introduction of man-made hard substrates in sandy environments), beam trawling, aggregate extraction, dredging and dumping, all resulting in…
PERSUADE ExPERimental approaches towards Future Sustainable Use of North Sea Artificial HarD SubstratEs Coastal areas are affected by a mixture of global change (warming and ocean acidification) and local pressures, induced by local human activity. In coastal areas around Europe, for example, there is an increasing trend towards the installation of offshore wind farms. This…
WinMon.BE The Belgian monitoring programme on the environmental impacts of offshore wind farms MARECO is coordinating the environmental monitoring program to assess the impact of Belgian offshore wind farms, WinMon.BE. Together with our partners Ghent University, INBO and ILVO, we assess the impacts onto the marine ecosystem and aim at revealing the processes behind these…
