FEEDRES: Analysis of Regime shifts in Marine Ecosystems
FEEDRES (Feedback Mechanism Approach to Resolve Regime Shifts in Ecological Systems) is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant program (Call: ERC-2024-STG Grant Agreement n: 101163496 ).
The project aims to understand when, why, and especially how marine ecosystems can undergo drastic and sometimes irreversible changes due to external pressures such as climate change or human activities. To achieve this goal, FEEDRES combines knowledge from complex systems theory, marine ecology, and statistics, developing new tools to predict and address these critical changes.
Objectives, Actions, and Results
At the heart of the FEEDRES project are regime shifts: sudden, non-linear transformations that cause profound structural and functional changes in ecological systems, often irreversible. These shifts occur in response to external pressures on the system. Typical examples include desertification, ice melting, and the loss of coral reefs replaced by algal-dominated systems. In large and complex ecosystems such as the North Sea or the Mediterranean, such phenomena have been observed, yet understanding the mechanisms that drive them remains a major challenge. Even more difficult is predicting if and when these changes will occur in the future — a crucial aspect for the effective and sustainable management of marine environments.
FEEDRES focuses on studying the mechanisms that drive regime shifts in large marine ecosystems. The goal is to understand how the system functions during these transformations — to uncover when, how, and why they occur, and to project where they might happen in the future.
The project is structured around three main objectives
Mapping regime shifts
Map and classify regime shifts documented in the literature across different marine systems worldwide. This will allow to identify teleconnections, synchronous events, and potential gaps in knowledge.
Determining how marine systems function during regime shifts
Characterize the typical structural elements and connections of different marine systems, analyzing how they change during regime shifts.
Identifying the mechanisms of marine systems affected by human pressures
Identify the mechanisms that promote or hinder regime shifts, taking into account connections across different levels of organization, as well as spatial and temporal scales. This will allow adding a new level of complexity to the map developed in the first objective and projecting the potential occurrence of similar phenomena in other areas.