Host: Società Italiana Di Biologia Marina
Name of the event: 54° Congresso SIBM
Place: Napoli, Italia
Date: 13/06/2025
Partners involved: CONISMA
The OCEAN CITIZEN project, funded by the European Commission, develops a sustainable model for coastal ecosystem restoration, focusing on marine algal and animal forests. This study addresses Gongolaria abies-marina forests sampled at Punta Blanca, Tenerife (Spain). Work Package 5 (WP5) evaluates natural capital and restoration sustainability using emergy analysis. The first steps involved defining procedures for the biophysical budget of the natural system and collecting data on environmental resources and capital components. Emergy analysis quantifies the value of natural systems by converting all energy and material flows into Solar Emergy Joules (sej), which can be expressed in monetary terms as Emergy Euro (eM€). This method estimates both generation costs and existence value of ecosystems. The initial phase characterized the system prior to restoration, considering benthic biomass, habitat area, and species-specific data. Environmental flows solar radiation, wind, rainfall, tides, and geothermal heat were also included. WP5 bridges biophysical and economic assessments, providing tools for sustainable marine ecosystem management.
Link: http://congresso.sibm.it