SEACHANGE: Quantifying the impact of major cultural transitions on marine ecosystem functioning and biodiversity

SEACHANGE is a synergetic alliance bought together to unlock the richness of oceanic history. Funded by European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant, this 6-year project will combine interdisciplinary research approaches to quantify the impact of major cultural transitions on marine ecosystem functioning and biodiversity, setting new baselines for understanding ocean environmental change. By understanding how the seas of today are different from the past, we will be able to better manage them for the future. The project will examine changes in 5 key case study regions: European impact in NE Iceland over the past 2000 years and Antarctica over the past 400 years; the impact of the hunter-gatherer to farming transition in NW Europe between 10,000 and 6000 years ago; changes in the North Sea over the past 2000 years; and changes in southern Brazil over the past 7000 years. Methods will include the analysis of food remains recovered by archaeological excavation of coastal middens, and the history of marine environments encoded in the ancient DNA of sediments and the growth structures of marine shells recovered from coring of the seabed.