Applications open for the MARBEFES Autumn School 2026: learn to use biodiversity assessment tools!

MARBEFES Autumn School 2026

The MARBEFES project (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services) is hosting the new edition of its Autumn School in October 2026, after last year’s very successful event in Seville.

Titled “The MARBEFES Toolbox: from marine diversity to societal value”, the School covers topics such as ecological assessment, socio-cultural and economic valuation, cross-cutting decision-support tools, and their uptake in real management settings.

Particular emphasis is placed on the ecological tools developed by the project, and collected in the MARBEFES Toolbox: over three days, participants will learn how to use the Toolbox for measuring and valuing marine biodiversity, and presenting science-based results to decision-makers. Students will also learn how to use these tools to tackle real marine-management problems.

The School takes place in Lecce, Italy, from 27 to 29 October, and will host 20 participants selected among the applicants, covering travel and accommodation expenses. Day 1 focuses on ecological tools, day 2 broadens out to valuation and cross-cutting tools, and day 3 moves on from project outputs to their uptake, sustainability, and integrated application. The programme includes a welcome aperitif and a social dinner.

Who is it for? MSc students, early-career researchers and PhD, as well as practitioners, marine managers and policy makers at various levels, with a focus or interest in marine biodiversity assessment, ecosystem-services valuation, and decision support. School sessions require a general environmental-science background, while no prior experience with the specific tools is required. Several sessions are hands-on, therefore, participants are encouraged to take an active part in the exercises and group work.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

  • Describe how the MARBEFES Toolbox links marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning to ecosystem services and societal benefits;
  • Apply selected MARBEFES ecological tools to assess biodiversity, ecological structure, functioning and vulnerability;
  • Employ socio-cultural and economic methods to value marine biodiversity in monetary, and non-monetary terms;
  • Illustrate how to run cross-cutting tools such as Bow-Tie Analysis and the HG&OG governance and knowledge-graph approach, to support management decisions;
  • Explain how to design and develop ecological tools to ensure their FAIRness, following the example of the MARBEFES outputs.

More details on the programme, venue, and terms can be found at: https://www.lifewatch.eu/marbefes-autumn-school-2026

Apply now to learn about the societal value of marine biodiversity, and how the MARBEFES Toolbox can support decision-making in this field: https://zfrmz.eu/UUQQaW5B0ThDa276dDGD.

LifeWatch ERIC joins ECSA 61: the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association Conference 2026

ECSA 61 (2)

From 24 to 27 August 2026, a global, multidisciplinary community of researchers and professionals is gathering in Belgium to discuss the urgent challenges posed by the triple planetary crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution – with threats to biodiversity representing a particularly major concern for both the planet health and human societies.

This is, in fact, the focus of “ECSA 61: Bridging the gap between science and policy in estuarine and coastal marine biodiversity: the way forward“.

Organised by Elsevier and the ECSA Association, the conference features sessions and workshops across four main topics: Physics, Ecology, Biogeochemistry, and the Human Dimension. The focus is on international collaborative actions, in particular across maritime areas, where there is urgent need to assess and manage threats, and to plan future initiatives that ensure a sustainable use of estuaries, coasts, and seas.

Building on the results of several Horizon Europe projects, this is also an opportunity to showcase the most recent advances in coastal marine research, and their application for European and international policies. For the first time, ECSA 61 also includes a “Science-meets-Policy” day on 27 August, providing an opportunity to discuss research findings with managers and decision-makers.

LifeWatch ERIC members Joaquin Lopez-Lerida, Cristina Huertas-Olivares, Julio Paneque, and CEO Christos Arvanitidis are attending the conference, contributing to two Special Sessions and presenting two posters:

In the Special Session “Toolboxes and Decision Support Systems for marine and estuarine management needs, uses and misuses”, chaired by Anita Franco (International Estuarine and Coastal Specialist Ltd, UK), they present the MARBEFES project toolbox, which integrates ecological, economic, and social analyses of marine biodiversity, together with the project partners.

In the Special Session “Environmental DNA for coastal and estuarine biodiversity monitoring and assessment: connecting scientific innovation with policy needs”, chaired by Jan Pawlowski (Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland), and Raffaele Siano (Ifremer DYNECO, France) they present tools for integrating citizen scientists into genomic observatories, to enhance coastal marine biomonitoring and ecological assessment, as well as operational eDNA workflows for biodiversity monitoring in coastal ecosystems within LifeWatch ERIC.

They also present the following posters: “Integrating decision support systems and toolboxes through the European Research Infrastructure Consortium LifeWatch”, and “From eDNA metabarcoding to operational marine biodiversity products: workflows within LifeWatch ERIC”.

Finally, they will also take part in the General Session on “Coastal and estuarine biodiversity and ecosystems”, on 26 August, where they will propose a holistic understanding of European marine biodiversity and the human communities that live within it.

For more information on this event and the full programme, visit: https://www.estuarinecoastalconference.com

MARBEFES Autumn School 2025: Call for Applications now open!

Great news! The MARBEFES Autumn School 2025 has now opened its Call for Applications, giving 20 participants the possibility to book one of the limited places by 31 August.

MARBEFES (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services) is a EU-funded project aiming to evaluate and characterise the links between marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services and the resulting societal goods and benefits in coastal communities.

The Autumn School “Protecting marine biodiversity for nature and humans” will take place in Seville (Spain) from 8 to 10 October 2025. It will offer participants travel, accommodation and lunch (see terms and conditions), for the duration of the programme, and has the objective of presenting one of the main project’s results: a set of easy-to-use-tools to help practitioners and policy makers maximise the ecological value and optimise a sustainable socio-economic use of the marine system for current and future generations.

The school programme will consist of four training modules:

  1. Assessing biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services
    1. Assessing ecological structure and functioning
    2. Biodiversity and climate change
    3. ARIES tool (assessment component)
  2. Risks and impacts
    1. Assessing risks and hazards to marine biodiversity
    2. Broad-scale measures of biodiversity and habitat quality 
  3. Valuing nature
    1. Ecologically valuing biodiversity – system levels
    2. Socio-cultural valuation and biodiversity 
    3. Socio-economic valuation of biodiversity
    4. ARIES tool (valuation component)
  4. Decision-making for management
    1. Social-ecological systems analysis in marine management
    2. Biodiversity management and the role of decisions support systems DSS

If you are a student, early career scientist, young researcher or early career practitioner interested in biodiversity and ecosystem assessment and measurement, and ecological, social and economic evaluation, apply from this page: https://www.lifewatch.eu/marbefes-autumn-school-2025!

MARBEFES Autumn School 2025: Save the date

MARBEFES Autumn School

The MARBEFES project (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services) aims to evaluate and characterise the links between marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services and the resulting societal goods and benefits in coastal communities.

The results of these evaluations feed into easy-to-use tools to help practitioners and policy maximise the ecological value and optimise a sustainable socio-economic use of the marine system for current and future generations.
The project members will present and discuss these tools, for biodiversity and ecosystem assessment and measurement, and ecological, social and economic evaluation, during the Autumn School 2025 “Protecting marine biodiversity for nature and humans”.

Organised by the MARBEFES project, and aimed at students, early career scientists, young researchers, early career practitioners (in statutory agencies, consultancies, etc), this 3-day Autumn School will take place from 8-10 October 2025, in Seville (Spain).

The Autumn School will welcome 20 participants, offering accommodation, travel (up to a predetermined amount, if exceeded participants will have to cover the difference) and lunch for the duration of the programme.
The Call for Applications will open in mid July on the project’s official website: https://marbefes.eu.
Stay tuned for updates!

Tracking biodiversity: it’s all about scale

Scale is a key ingredient when assessing and studying biodiversity: this is the video’s key message just released by the MARBEFES project, focusing on the Baltic Sea Broad Belt Transect (BBT). The video is the first “Meet the BBTs”video series that will be released to explore current challenges faced by biodiversity in Europe.

MARBEFES, the EU project in which LifeWatch ERIC is a partner, aims to identify the connections between marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, and the resulting societal goods and benefits within coastal communities. The BBTs are the backbone of the MARBEFES research project, which aims to broaden our knowledge and understanding of biodiversity across Europe and beyond. This will help researchers gain a deeper insight into the changes occurring in our environment.

The video series serves as an initiative to heighten awareness about the critical significance of biodiversity in marine environments. 

In this episode, MARBEFES took a deep dive into the Gulf of Gdańsk (Zatoka Gdańska), coastal inlet of the Baltic Sea, in Northern Poland. These shallow waters are home to diverse species of fish, birds, and marine mammals, including the iconic grey seal. Unfortunately, the Gulf of Gdańsk is currently experiencing many pressures which are leading to habitat degradation and biodiversity loss: pollution (plastic, nutrients and various chemicals), intense shipping, large-scale tourism, increasing urbanisation, coastal erosion, are all putting at risk this key and fragile habitat, and climate change is also taking its toll on the area.

The Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IO PAN) is responsible for data collection and analysis in the Gulf of Gdańsk BBT. Thanks to the activities developed within MARBEFES project, researchers can determine which actions need to be taken to protect this key area. The video, narrated by Jan Marcin Węsławski, marine ecologist at The Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IO PAN), highlights the significance of studying biodiversity at various levels. At the smallest scale, microorganisms inhabit the beach sand. For these organisms, a one-square metre sample of the seabed in Sopot is adequate to represent the diversity of microorganisms across the Baltic region. At a medium scale, macrofauna, such as crustaceans and molluscs, are a few centimetres in size. In this case, samples from a much larger region spanning several square kilometres are necessary to accurately represent the diversity of these species in a specific area. Things change again at the largest scale, with megafauna and top predators – large fish, seabirds, and sea mammals. These creatures are highly mobile and exist in low densities, necessitating the exploration of the whole region to capture the biodiversity at this scale accurately.

When studying our planet’s biodiversity, it’s crucial to observe the species-area curve for each organism scale separately. This curve shows the relationship between the area of a habitat and the number of species found within that area. It’s a vital tool for understanding and protecting biodiversity. MARBEFES addresses this and focuses on subtropical to subarctic regions to ensure a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity across the European domain.

To learn more about MARBEFES and to watch the video, please visit this page: https://marbefes.eu/article/discover-bbt-region-within-our-project-1-out-of-4-movies-3-steps-into-the-sea-baltic-bbt