Assessing and modelling ecosystem changes in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea pelagic ecosystem - SESAME

SESAME was an Integrated Project under the European Union's 6th Framework Programme. The project involved almost four hundred scientists from 59 research institutes in 24 countries, which included almost all countries of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins. This level of cooperation and coordination allowed data collection on different aspects of the Mediterranean and Black Sea ecosystems on a scale never before attempted. The project was designed to study the past, present and future environmental changes in the Southern European Seas (SES) ecosystems, as well as the effect of these changes on fundamental goods (tourism, fisheries) and services (mitigation of climate through carbon sequestration and ecosystem stability through conservation of biodiversity) provided by the ecosystems.

The project's innovative character was reflected in the close merging of economic and natural sciences to study changes that occurred in the past 50 years and those that may occur in the next 50 years, through connecting ecological models with climatic and socio-economic scenarios.