ACCES Kick-off meeting Sopot, 25th - 27th February 2019

De-icing of Arctic Coasts: Critical or new opportunities for marine biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Place: Sopot, Poland

Time in CET (Central European Time)

25th February Day 1 - arrival day

• Two flights with 7 participants who are coming one after another at 12:35 and 12:55. One IOPAN bus will collect the group of 7 people and the driver will be easy to spot since keeping a large sign with ACESS written.
• Two persons are coming 13.40 - and will be collect by car.
• One person coming at 14.40 and another one at 16.00 and these two will have to take a taxi each to Haffner Hotel.

25th February

16:45 Meet in reception, Haffner Hotel to walk to IO PAN (300 m distance)
17:00-18:30 Welcome – introduction + short overview of the ACCES project by Janne

19:00 Dinner

26th February IO PAN

09:00 – 11:45 Overview of existing data/monitoring programs relevant for ACCES and briefly mention how ACCES potentially can provide added-value/ new inputs/perspectives in the ongoing work.
09:10 – 09:25 Ken Dunton LTER: Beaufort Sea Lagoons: An Arctic Coastal Ecosystem in Transition
09:30 – 09:50 CJ Mundy SIMEP (Southampton Island Marine Ecosystem) project

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10:10-10:30 Simon Belanger Remote sensing and opportunities for ACCES
10:30-10:50 Mikael Sejr Monitoring East Greenland – Young Sound
10:50-11:10 Jan Marcin Węsławski Brief overview Svalbard Coastal studies/monitoring
11:10-11:30 Amanda Poste Where land meets sea: Effects of terrestrial inputs on contaminant dynamics in Arctic coastal ecosystems (TerrACE) Svalbard
11:30-11.50 Piotr Graczyk: WP4 Social impacts and management
11:50-12:00 People sign up for the break-out sessions after lunch

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00 to 15:00 Work package break-out sessions (WP leaders in brackets)

WP1 Ecosystem drivers and primary producers (CJ Mundy, Canada, K. Dunton, US and A Hudson, Norway)
WP2 Biodiversity and food web structures (K. Iken, US, JE Søreide, Norway and M Sejr, Denmark)
WP3 Climate scenarios (JM Węsławski, Poland, S. Bélanger, Canada and A. Poste, Norway)
WP4 Social impacts and management (Piotr Graczyk, Norway, Joanna Piwowarczyk, Poland)

16:00 – 17:00 Summary of WP discussions and priorities

19:00 Dinner

Day 3

09:00 to 11:30 Discuss which core parameters/methods to focus upon across the selected study sites to best achieve of answering the key ACCES research questions in a “pan-Arctic” context based on the data that already exist and those planned gathered through ACCES

Our overarching hypothesis of the ACCES project is:
De-icing of Arctic coasts will have multidimensional consequences for ecosystem biodiversity and function - leading to socio- ecological breakpoints and regime shifts in near future. Through multiple (and often interrelated) abiotic, biotic and human induced stressors “native” species assemblages and distribution patterns will change and alter coastal marine food web structures and livelihoods of coastal communities.

The central objectives of the proposed project are to:
09:15-10:00 a) Determine to what extent changes in hydrography, nutrient dynamics, underwater light and sediment load impact primary producers’ biodiversity, distribution and bloom phenology.
10:00-10:45 b) Identify consequences of sea ice decline on nearshore metazoan biodiversity, distribution and trophic structure.

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11:00-11:45 c) Start dialog with relevant stakeholders to document and analyse their development strategies and knowledge-needs in light of different de-icing scenarios.

12:00-13:00 Lunch (A. Poste, M. McGovern, P. Renaud leave at lunch time).

Session 13:00-15:00 Planned field work/synthesis papers for 2019 and briefly 2020 and potentially 2021.

13:00-13:20 Janne Søreide Workshop in Svalbard Longyearbyen in 2019.
13:30-13:50 Janne/ Jan Marcin: Svalbard
13:50-14:20 CJ Mundy/ S. Belanger: Canada

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14:30-14:50 Ken Dunton: USA
14:50-15:10 Mikael Sejr: Greenland

Session 15:10-16:45 Summary based on Discussion earlier that day: what to prioritize in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to accomplish the ACCES work.

17:00 meeting ends – dinner in town for those still around.