“Challenges of ecological connectivity via larval dispersal for offshore wind farm development in the Northwestern Mediterranean: Mapping and impacts on biodiversity conservation”
The development of offshore wind farms in the Mediterranean, a true biodiversity hotspot and a region particularly sensitive to climate change, is reshaping marine ecosystems. These infrastructures can act as climate refugia or dispersal corridors, thereby altering the connectivity of sessile species. This PhD project will assess the combined impacts of climate change and marine urbanization on ecological connectivity in the Northwestern Mediterranean (NWM), and will develop scientific tools to guide ecological management and help reconcile energy transition with biodiversity conservation. Specifically, the project will map larval connectivity between coastal hard-bottom habitats, offshore wind-farm sites, and offshore hard-bottom habitats in the NWM under present and future climate conditions. These data will be integrated with the ecological niches of two target species (Paramauricea clavata and Sabella spallanzanii) to evaluate the combined influence of marine urbanization and climate change on their potential distribution. Finally, we will develop and incorporate multi-site connectivity into marine spatial planning tools such as MARXAN, which until now have primarily considered direct connectivity, in order to capture more realistic ecological processes.Larval dispersal will rely on high-resolution coastal circulation models (<500 m, from the Ligurian Sea to the Catalan coast) produced within the ANR POPNCO project for the periods 2000–2019 and 2080–2099, using downscaled regional reanalyses and climate projections (present and future) provided by Météo-France.
