Jeroen Gerhard Steenbeek

Ecopath International Initiative, Spain · R&D

Food webs depict the intricate connections between organisms in ecosystems, vital for grasping energy and material transfers. However, creating precise food webs is challenging due to the complexity of ecological systems and the need for extensive data. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), notably in Natural Language Processing (NLP...

The worlds’ marine ecosystems are degrading under wide ranges of ever intensifying, diversifying and co-occurring human pressures. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) approaches have emerged as an alternative to ineffective single species and single sector management, veering away from siloed topdown approaches towards science-based, participatory pro...

This paper aims to develop an assessment of the COVID-19 impact on key sectors (small-scale and large fisheries) in Spain, one of the most important maritime regions in the world. We synthesize multiple data sources from across the seafood supply chain to show the relative seafood sector responses and variables of recovery during the pre-COVID-19 p...

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have been widely applied in ecology to analyze the historical and future patterns of marine species' distributions. With the increasing impact of climate change in recent decades, understanding potential shifts in species distributions has become a crucial challenge. Research on alterations in spatial and temporal...

Climate change could irreversibly modify Southern Ocean ecosystems. Marine ecosystem model (MEM) ensembles can assist policy making by projecting future changes and allowing the evaluation and assessment of alternative management approaches. However, projected changes in total consumer biomass from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomp...

As the urgency to evaluate the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems increases, there is a need to develop robust projections and improve the uptake of ecosystem model outputs in policy and planning. Standardising input and output data is a crucial step in evaluating and communicating results, but can be challenging when using models with...

Understanding climate change impacts on global marine ecosystems and fisheries requires complex marine ecosystem models, forced by global climate projections, that can robustly detect and project changes. The Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP) uses an ensemble modelling approach to fill this crucial gap. Yet Fis...

Climate change is affecting ocean temperature, acidity, currents, and primary production, causing shifts in species distributions, marine ecosystems, and ultimately fisheries. Earth system models simulate climate change impacts on physical and biogeochemical properties of future oceans under varying emissions scenarios. Coupling these simulations w...

Marine ecosystems provide essential services to the Earth System and society. These ecosystems are threatened by anthropogenic activities and climate change. Climate change increases the risk of passing tipping points; for example, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) might tip under future global warming leading to additional cha...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) are increasingly driven by Earth System Models (ESMs) to better understand marine ecosystem dynamics, and to analyze the effects of alternative management efforts for marine ecosystems under potential scenarios of climate change. However, policy and commercial activities typically occur on seasonal‐to‐decadal time sca...

There is an urgent need for models that can robustly detect past and project future ecosystem changes and risks to the services that they provide to people. The Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP) was established to develop model ensembles for projecting long-term impacts of climate change on fisheries and marine...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) are increasingly forced with Earth System Models (ESMs) to better understand marine ecosystem dynamics, and to analyse the effects of alternative management efforts for marine ecosystems under potential scenarios of global change. However, policy and commercial activities typically occur on seasonal-to-decadal time sc...

The need to implement an ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) is enshrined in numerous regulations and strategies, at both global and European level. In practice, it is challenging to implement EBFM because it requires a complex evaluation of interlinked management effects and environmental and climate forcing on multi-species interactions,...

Marine animal biomass is expected to decrease in the 21st century due to climate driven changes in ocean environmental conditions. Previous studies suggest that the magnitude of the decline in primary production on apex predators could be amplified through the trophodynamics of marine food webs, leading to larger decreases in the biomass of predato...

Recent decades have witnessed declines in the amount of fishing catch due to changes in the marine ecosystem of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. These changes are mainly a consequence of direct human activities as well as global warming and the entry of invasive species. Therefore, there is a need to improve fisheries management so that it accounts f...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) have been developed to analyse the past and future dynamics of life in the oceans. One of such efforts is EcoOcean, a complex, mechanistic and spatio-temporal explicit MEM of the global oceans based on a trophodynamic core. EcoOcean requires as inputs the species native ranges and suitable habitats, and for key enviro...

The West Florida Shelf (WFS), located in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, fosters high species richness and supports highly valuable fisheries. However, red tide events occur regularly that can impact fisheries resources as well as ecosystem state, functioning, and derived services. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and quantify the spatiotemporal...

The western Mediterranean basin is a high marine biodiversity area under severe pressure by changing climate and intense human activities. Beyond national jurisdictions, international institutions such as the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) work towards canalizing a regional consensus that fishing practices should evolve t...

Understanding the cumulative effects of multiple stressors is a research priority in environmental science. Ecological models are a key component of tackling this challenge because they can simulate interactions between the components of an ecosystem. Here, we ask, how has the popular modeling platform Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) been used to model h...

International proposals for marine biodiversity seek to expand marine protected area (MPA) coverage from 8% to 30%, known as 30x30. Quadrupling MPA coverage implies considerably higher MPA system costs and governments need early knowledge of these to inform debate. Ambitious MPA expansion also implies large potential losses or "opportunity costs" f...

Cumulative pressures are rapidly expanding in the Mediterranean Sea with consequences for marine biodiversity and marine resources, and the services they provide. Policy makers urge for a marine ecosystem assessment of the region in space and time. This study evaluates how the whole Mediterranean food web may have responded to historical changes in...

Climate and fisheries interact, often synergistically, and may challenge marine ecosystem functioning and, ultimately, seafood provision and human wellbeing that depend on them. Holistic and integrative approaches aiming at evaluating the spatial overlap between these major stressors are crucial for identifying marine regions and key fish species t...

Successful management of lake ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide necessitates ecosystem‐based management. The application of ecosystem‐based management can assist in achieving sustainable management of the ecosystem to ensure continued and sustainable supply of ecosystem services such as fisheries. One concept for defining sustainab...

Marine species are widely threatened by anthropogenic activities, including fishing and human-induced climate change. However, geographically broad and spatially explicit assessments of the simultaneous impacts of these major threats at regional scales are mostly lacking due to the practical challenges of surveying vast geographical areas and obtai...

Understanding the cumulative effects of multiple stressors is a research priority in environmental science. Ecological models are a key component of tackling this challenge because they can simulate interactions between the components of an ecosystem. Here, we ask, how has the popular modeling platform Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) been used to model h...

Climate and fisheries interact, often synergistically, and may challenge marine ecosystem functioning and management, along with seafood provision. Here, we spatially combine highly resolved assessments of climate-driven changes in optimal environmental conditions (i.e., optimal habitats) for the pelagic fish community with available industrial fis...

Small pelagic fish (SPF) are key organisms for the functioning of pelagic marine ecosystems. In recent decades, these species have undergone significant changes in biomass, growth and body condition in the Mediterranean Sea. Seasonal and spatial information about changes in biological and ecological traits of SPF and their relationship with environ...

Self-reporting applications are considered a promising solution for fisheries data monitoring. However, they are still failing in providing accurate information and engaging users. We introduce the Shiny4SelfReport, an application for self-reporting data in fisheries that aims to address these shortcomings. Instead of using expensive proprietary so...

In a prequel to this paper, we used non-spatial temporal modelling to investigate the impact of non-native ecosystem engineers on a small-scale, intertidal rocky shore in Saldanha Bay, on the west coast of South Africa, where invasive species have changed the physical environment between 1980 and 2015. However, we considered this approach incomplet...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) provide a deeper understanding of marine ecosystem dynamics. The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development has highlighted the need to deploy these complex mechanistic spatial-temporal models to engage policy makers and society into dialogues towards sustainably managed oceans. From our shared...

Projections of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems have revealed long-term declines in global marine animal biomass and unevenly distributed impacts on fisheries. Here we apply an enhanced suite of global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP), forced by new-generation Earth...

Small pelagic fish (SPF) in the western Mediterranean Sea are key elements of the marine food web and are important in terms of biomass and fisheries catches. Significant declines in biomass, landings, and changes in the age/size structure of sardine Sardina pilchardus and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus have been observed in recent decades, particu...

The implementation of marine spatial plans as required by the Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) of the European Union (EU) poses novel demands for the development of decision support tools (DST). One fundamental aspect is the need for tools to guide decisions about the allocation of human activities at sea in ways that are ecosystem-base...

Climate change is warming the ocean and impacting lower trophic level (LTL) organisms. Marine ecosystem models can provide estimates of how these changes will propagate to larger animals and impact societal services such as fisheries, but at present these estimates vary widely. A better understanding of what drives this inter-model variation will i...

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri bution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract This study evaluates the relationship between both commercial and scientific spatial fisheries data and a new satellite-based estimate o...

Supplementary Information of : Mesoscale productivity fronts and local fishing opportunities in the European Seas. Fish and Fisheries, 00, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12585

The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform helps planners and stakeholders understand and manage the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). In the interactive simulation different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Planners can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space,...

Eutrophication is one of the most important anthropogenic pressures impacting coastal seas. In Europe, several legislations and management measures have been implemented to halt nutrient overloading in marine ecosystems. This study evaluates the impact of freshwater nutrient control measures on higher trophic levels (HTL) in European marine ecosyst...

We have developed an approach that connects a complex and widely used scientific ecosystem modeling approach with a game engine for real-time communication and visualization of scientific results. The approach, OceanViz, focuses on communicating scientific data to non-scientific audiences to foster dialogue, offering experimental, immersive approac...

Among FAO's Major Fishing Areas, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea had the highest percentage (62.5%) of stocks fished at unsustainable levels, especially demersal stocks. Spatial-temporal restrictions of fishing activities are important measures used for the management of marine stocks. However, sometimes these regulations are not fully implemen...

Sustainable fishing practices must ensure human wellbeing by safeguarding the integrity of marine life-supporting systems. Unfortunately, a significant challenge to fisheries management is that sustainable fishing levels can decline, often synergistically, by co-occurring with climate-driven environmental stressors. Within one of the most impacted...

Considerable effort is being deployed to predict the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the ocean's biophysical environment, biodiversity, and natural resources to better understand how marine ecosystems and provided services to humans are likely to change and explore alternative pathways and options. We present an updated ve...

• The overexploitation of many marine resources and ecosystems calls for the development and implementation of measures to support their recovery and conservation. • The potential contributions to support fisheries and ecosystem recovery were assessed at the local level of the three multiple‐use marine protected areas (MPAs) of Cerbère‐Banyuls, Med...

In the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and the European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) are the most important small pelagic fish in terms of biomass and commercial interest. During the last years, these species have experimented changes in their abundance and biomass trends in the Northwestern Mediterrane...

A mass balance model of the marine ecosystems is presented for the four prefectures of Japan prior to the Great East Japan earthquake. The Ecopath with Ecosim food web modelling approach and its Ecotracer routine were used to simulate the concentrations of ¹³⁷Cs in the ocean and the biota in order to serve as baseline, , and to estimate the initial...

One of the most applied tools to create ecosystem models to support management decisions in the light of ecosystem-based fisheries management is Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE). Recently, its spatial routine Ecospace has evolved due to the addition of the Habitat Foraging Capacity Model (HFCM), a spatial-temporal dynamic niche model to drive the foraging...

The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge simulation platform helps planners and stakeholders understand and manage the complexity of MSP. In the interactive simulation, different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Users can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space ov...

Researchers explain the technological challenges and solutions underlying the development of the MSP Challenge simulation platform, a multiuser game-based simulation platform for integrated maritime spatial planning. Game changer for MSP Who should read this paper? This paper is relevant to those working in and researching marine or maritime (spati...

The current alarming state of many coastal ecosystems and fisheries calls for the development of tools to support recovery of exploited stocks, ensure their sustainable exploitation and protect marine ecosystems. Multi-zone Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are often advocated to reconcile conservation and fisheries benefits. However, while there is a...

Aquaculture is the world's most diverse farming practice in terms of number of species, farming methods and environments used. While various organizations and institutions have promoted species diversification, overall species diversity within the aquaculture industry is likely not promoted nor sufficiently well quantified. Using the most extensive...

Many commercial species of the world are overexploited resulting in substantial reductions of biomass and ecological changes. Spatial-temporal restrictions of fishing activities are important measures used for the management of marine stocks. However, evidence of whether fishing bans benefit whole ecosystems is still scant. Here, we developed a foo...

Discarding is one of the most important topics in fisheries management, both for economic and ecological reasons. The European Union has included, through the current EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) Regulation, a discard ban with a quite controversial instrument: to enforce the landing of unwanted catch as a measure to promote their reduction. Thi...

The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform helps planners and stake-holders understand and manage the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). In the interactive simulation different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Planners can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space...

The Mediterranean Sea is one of the largest seas in the world and has a great diversity of marine species. Currently, the Mediterranean Sea is facing various threats, with alien species being one of the most important. To address this problem, it is very important to understand how alien species arrive and where they are in the Mediterranean Sea. F...

While the physical dimensions of climate change are now routinely assessed through multimodel intercomparisons, projected impacts on the global ocean ecosystem generally rely on individual models with a specific set of assumptions. To address these single-model limitations, we present standardized ensemble projections from six global marine ecosyst...

The spatial prediction of species distributions from survey data is a significant component of spatial planning and the ecosystem-based management approach to marine resources. Statistical analysis of species occurrences and their relationships with associated environmental factors is used to predict how likely a species is to occur in unsampled lo...

Global impact models represent process-level understanding of how natural and human systems may be affected by climate change. Their projections are used in integrated assessments of climate change. Here we test, for the first time, systematically across many important systems, how well such impact models capture the impacts of extreme climate cond...