DISCLOSE

DIstribution, StruCture and functioning of LOw-resilience seafloor communities and habitats of the Dutch North SEa

DISCLOSE is a collaboration of

(Find the teammembers here)

 

and was funded by 

DISCLOSE runs from March 2016 – March 2021

Project Goals

The North Sea is home to a diverse range of habitats and species, but at the same time it’s one of the most used marine regions in the world. Some of these habitats and species are under threat from this intensive activity.

DISCLOSE aimed to map the habitats of the North Sea, with special attention to the dispersal, structure and functioning of vulnerable seafloor communities. A combination of spatially hierarchical methods was applied, from large-scale remote acoustic sensing (TU), to middle-scale video techniques (UG), and to small-scale functional trait analyses of benthic communities (NIOZ). The North Sea Foundation safeguarded the societal relevance of research questions during the project, and disseminated resulting research output to policymakers, NGO’s and other stakeholders of the North Sea. With this multidisciplinary approach, DISCLOSE intented to extrapolate the detailed findings of community functioning at the small-scale to full-scale habitat maps, based on the knowledge gathered at the middle and large scales. This improved current monitoring techniques and provided required knowledge for sustainable management of the (Dutch) North Sea.

Results

DISCLOSE yielded multiple scientific publications, produced informative newsletters twice a year, and organized a symposium (2019) and a webinar (2020) to disseminate the findings.  It also developed an interactive online map of the North Sea, enabling anyone to discover the North Sea themselves. You can also easily read trough an interactive summary of most findings in this storymap.