Marine & Coastal Environments, Ecosystems & People Network

Lead: Dr Bryce Stewart                                                                Department of Environment and Geography

Co-Lead: Dr Stephanie Piper                                                        Department of Archaeology

The Marine & Coastal Environments, Ecosystems & People Research network are interested in all aspects of the sea and coast. Our work spans disciplines, time and geographic scales. We're particularly interested in all types of change, management, and the relationships people had, have and will have with these environments. 

Over 775 million people depend directly on the marine environment, yet our seas and coastlines are sites of rapid change. With this network we aim to bring together researchers from across the University of York to better understand marine and coastal ecosystems, environments and the (human) communities connected to them. From the past to the present, we’re interested in all aspects of change in these environments and places, how people interact and depend on them and what managing these areas for the future could look like. Our expertise spans disciplines and departments and in addition to our research themes, we are interested in developing novel interdisciplinary methods and ways of working. 

Network Themes

The following is a summary of the different research themes that we already work in or identify as current and upcoming hot topics. There’s a strong temporal dimension to these research themes i.e. people working under the same theme but looking at it at different time scales, and a lot of overlap i.e. people working on two or more themes in the same project. These research themes also cover a variety of environments (coastal, marine, islands).

1. Human interactions and dependency on marine and coastal spaces: this includes things like ecosystem services, valorisation of marine products, connections to wellbeing, blue carbon, past and present uses of marine resources, cultural connections, artistic work etc.
2. Managing human interactions with marine and coastal spaces: this includes things like conservation, restoration, regulation and governance, trade, management, sustainability, transformation, reconciling conflicts, subsidies etc. 
3. Change: Understanding change (e.g. sea-level change, ecosystem changes, extinction and speciation, perceptions of change etc.). Identifying drivers of change (e.g. culture, seismological events, changing consumer / market preferences etc.). Adaptation and responses to change: Human dimensions of responses to change, past and present (e.g. capacity to respond to change, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, vulnerability, social justice and (in)equalities, coastal resilience, climate mitigation, governance of novel threats etc.). Environmental and ecological dimensions of change, past and present (e.g. impacts on marine resources, how ecosystems respond to human uses, marine responses to environmental change etc.)
4. Research, impact and communication: this includes things like connecting research impacts to communities and governments; using acoustics to connect people with the ocean; working with diverse, sometimes conflicting stakeholders; asking if research and management are suitable and adaptable to the complexity of issues facing coastal areas; system change in knowledge systems; dealing with rapid environmental policy change (e.g. Brexit, COP26 commitments etc); questions on how to support change (e.g. financing) etc.
5. Developing novel approaches, working across different disciplines and methods: this includes things like integrating across different data types, disciplines, existing projects; use of different methods; comparison between marine and terrestrial systems; bridging complexity and simplicity etc.

If you’re a student or researcher at York, please join the network and/or follow our work on Twitter @UniYorkMarine.

Join the Network