Status, trends and drivers of kelp forests in Europe: an expert assessment

Grants

Funding Acknowledgements

We would like to thank to the following persons or entities: (1) Lise Tveiten (NIVA) and Frithjof Moy (Institute of Marine Research, IMR), who for many years have sampled data on kelp forest ecology and distribution along the Norwegian coast; (2) The financial partners of the two monitoring programs "the Brittany REBENT" and the "European Water Framework Directive" for making it possible to obtain valuable data: the Brittany Region, the European Regional Development Fund, the Loire-Brittany Water Agency, the ONEMA, Ifremer, the MNHN and the Estuaires Loire Vilaine association; (3) Elodie Catherine, Francois-Xavier Decaris, Rene Derrien, Marie Mercier-Pecard, Nicolas Mercier and Thomas Abiven Annie Castric-Fey, Annie Girard-Descatoire, Marie-Therese L'Hardy-Halos (MNHN Station de Biologie Marine de Concarneau) who have, for many years, also contributed to French data on kelp forest ecology and distribution; (4) The marine operation department (Service Mer et Observation) of the Station Biologique de Roscoff and the natural marine park Parc Naturel Marin d'Iroise; (5) The MarClim project at the Marine Biological Association of the UK that has maintained long-term studies of kelps in the UK thanks to funding from Natural England and Natural Resources Wales; (6) Rolf Karez and the State Agency for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Areas, Lower Saxony, Germany who have a regular kelp monitoring program in the German North Sea with Philipp Schubert, being the main responsible diving expert; (7) Christian Wiencke (Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany) who established the recent quantitative diving study at Kongsfjorden, Spitsbergen, where the sampling was performed with major help from Max Schwanitz and Martin Paar; (8) Annalisa Falace who reviewed the data for the Adriatic Sea; (9) The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (projects of Ester Serrao: EXCL/AAG-GLO/0661/2012 and PTDC/MAR-EST/6053/2014) and postdoctoral fellowship to JA (SFRH/BPD/111003/2015) and RA (SFRH/BPD/75843/2011); (10) The project TETRIS (PRIN 2010-2011, MIUR) for support to LA and EMS. This work was funded by the European Commission under FP7 as the coordination action KNEU-"Developing a Knowledge Network for EUropean expertise on biodiversity and ecosystem services to inform policy making economic sectors" (Grant No. 265299).