Project HORIZON2020-BG-2018-2020 (Blue Growth), BRIDGE-BS, June 2021 – November 2025

With unique habitats, abundant resources, and rich cultural heritage, the Black Sea is vital to its coastal communities and the broader population of over 160 million inhabiting its watershed. The Black Sea is a distinctive semi-enclosed basin with 10 large rivers flowing into a highly coupled coastal-deep-sea system introducing anthropogenically generated nutrients and pollutants nourishing the largest anoxic-sulfidic water body of the Earth. The Black Sea ecosystem is also unique in being susceptible to increasingly negative impacts from several human-induced stressors, such as eutrophication and hypoxia, overfishing, and the introduction of alien species. Multistressors are a central challenge to be tackled by BRIDGE-BS.

BRIDGE-BS will develop predictive tools and capabilities necessary to understand and predict the impacts of climate-driven and anthropogenic multi-stressors on the services stemming from Black Sea ecosystems. These services and their responses to stressors will be mapped, monitored, and modeled to identify a safe operating space within which a sustainable blue economy can flourish.