The Marine Microbiome Roadmap was published by the AORAC-SA project in February 2020. The Roadmap is the result of an international cooperative effort between Canada, the European Union and the United States of America produced within the AORA framework and consistent with the Galway Statement on Atlantic Ocean Cooperation. The roadmap has been put together with inputs of Principal Investigators of numerous other projects. Among these, Blue-Action has contributed to one specific section of the Roadmap, the one on “Environment and Climate”.

Blue-Action worked on the specific chapter on Environment and Climate of the Roadmap, stressing the importance of establishing the bidirectional links between the Atlantic Microbiome and environment and climate.

The Atlantic Microbiome influences climate through sequestration of atmospheric Carbon dioxide and production of climatically active compounds. Conversely a key contribution is the recognition that climatic changes in environmental factors will influence the biogeography and provision of marine ecosystem services by the marine microbiome. 

A key contribution was therefore to understand the links between microbiome observations and climatic hotspots by identifying the need to use IPCC prediction models to map appropriate spatial and temporal components of observational frameworks for Atlantic Microbiomes.

A second contribution was to highlight the need to identify the technological requirements and hurdles for successful implementation of monitoring programs that link climate observations with the provision of marine ecosystem services mediated by the microbiome. 

AORA-CSA Marine Microbiome Roadmap available in Zenodo