For the next four years, Ghent University is involved in a new EU project, together with 17 other partners. It is all about Monitoring and  Evaluation of Spatially Managed Areas (MESMA). UGent will mainly coordinate the different case studies. The MESMA project focuses on marine spatial planning and aims to produce integrated management tools (concepts, models and guidelines) for monitoring, evaluation and implementation of Spatially Managed Areas (SMAs). The project results will support integrated management plans for designated or proposed sites with assessment methods based onEuropean collaboration.
The main tasks in the project are information analysis, the development of a generic framework, the testing and evaluation of this framework through case-studies and the development of a toolbox.
MESMA will supply innovative methods and integrated strategies for governments, local authorities, stakeholders, and other managerial bodies for planning and decision making at different local, national, and European scales, for sustainable development of European seas and coastal areas. This will comprise an easy accessible data system, containing information on the distribution of marine habitats and species, economic values, and human uses, in order to support dialogue between politicians, stakeholders and the public in general
MESMA will provide a firm basis for the implementation of the Marine Strategy Directive and related policies.

On the 28th of  January Francesca Pasotti (PhD student) and her supervisor Prof. Ann Vanreusel left from Buenos Aires towards King George Island for an Antarctic research expedition on the impact of climate change on the marine environment. King George Island (also known as Isla 25 de Mayo) is a sub-antarctic island belonging to the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, in Potter Cove, one of the several embayments of the island, the Dallmann laboratory (Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany), the facilities provided by the Argentinean research station and thelogistic of the military base “Jubany”, lend to scientists the chance to investigate intensively and relatively easily the surrounding polar environment and the effects that global warming can have on its delicate equilibria. The cove waters are fed by the Fourcade glacier, which is part of the Warsawa icefield and is actively retreating since the early 1950’s. Our research group is involved in an international project named IMCOAST (Impact of climate induced glacial melting on marine coastal systems in the Western Antarctic Peninsula region) which involves the collaboration of Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Argentina covering research topics such as earth sciences, geology, sedimentology, microbiology, phytoplankton dynamics, macrobenthos ecology and finally us, the meiobenthos functional ecology.