Food-web modeling in the Maritime Spatial Planning Challenge Simulation Platform: Results from the Baltic Sea Region

The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform helps planners and stakeholders understand and manage the complexity of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). In the interactive simulation different data layers covering an entire sea region can be viewed to make an assessment of the current status. Planners can create scenarios for future uses of the marine space, over a period of several decades. The different plans for energy, shipping and the marine environment are then simulated and the effects are visualized in indicators and heat maps. To support in the implementation of the EU MSP Directive principles of evidence-based and ecosystem-based MSP, the authors created a link between the MSP Challenge and the food web modelling approach Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE). For each regional edition of the MSP Challenge, such as the North Sea or the Baltic Sea, a food-web model for the sea basin needs to be integrated. In this paper, the authors explain the integration of EwE into the MSP Challenge and evaluate the behavior of the food web model for the Baltic Sea from historic data, a baseline scenario and in shipping and offshore energy scenarios developed by planners from the region in a game session. The conclusion is that the current integration of the Baltic Sea food-web model into the platform gives ecologically realistic feedback and that this makes the players more aware of the effects of their plans on the entire ecosystem.