About Restoreseas
Marine forests are biodiversity-rich ecosystems engineered by key structural taxa of macroalgae, seagrasses and corals, and they provide many ecosystem services for humanity.
Marine forests are disappearing at unprecedented rates. The loss of these marine forests represents a catastrophic event causing loss of ecosystem services that are essential for humanity, including 1) nursery and feeding grounds for many marine species, 2) coastal protection against erosion, 3) counteracting climate change by carbon sequestration.
Yet, out of sight and challenging to reach, below the ocean surface, marine forest restoration is rare, despite massive scales of degradation. RESTORESEAS aims to improve resilience of restoration of marine habitats in the Atlantic coasts, by applying novel nature-based solutions.
Corals
Corals are home to about one fourth of all known marine species.
Seagrasses
Seagrasses are more efficient in carbon sequestration (per area) than terrestrial forests.
Seaweeds
Seaweeds are the base for several marine ecosystems, providing food and energy to numerous marine species.
With RESTORESEAS we will bring novelty on how to protect and restore marine forests. We will test, for instance, critical restoration effort needed to reverse tipping points; we will work on a global scale with real data from many partners and use modeling approaches to create unprecedented predictions of restoration and conservation needs for adaptive traits to be considered in policy planning. We will widely integrate citizens and stakeholders in marine restoration to add educational value and ensure upscaling in space and long-term results.
Ester Serrão, coordinator of the RESTORESEAS project
is a full Professor at the University of Algarve and leads a research team at
CCMAR (Centre of Marine Sciences, in Faro) working on Biogeography, Evolution and Conservation of Marine Biodiversity
Further information
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Latest News
Kick-Off Meeting
On 12-13 April 2022 RESTORESEAS had its first general meeting. In this kick-off meeting, led by coordinator Prof. Ester Serrao, we put the wheel in motion to start the work proposed in each of our work packages. The meeting was attended by all 13 international partner.
Funding partners
