The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strongly influences marine biodiversity and the sustained exploitation of marine resources at the Chilean and Peruvian coastline. The warm phase (El Niño; EN) and cold phase (La Niña: LN) cause differences in the upwelling Humboldt Current and have both positive and negative socioeconomic, ecological and infrastructural implications in those and other countries. The benefits for local communities are presently underappreciated.

Therefore the aim of the CENSOR project is to enhance the detection, compilation and understanding of EN and LN effects on coastal marine environments and resources. Local artisanal fisheries and many commercial branches connected to them will benefit from the findings. Thus this project is expected to be of high economic and social interest for Chile and Peru, as well as for their environmental policy and social stability.

To achieve this goal we propose a multidisciplinary approach, which enables us to build a comprehensive picture illustrating the response of the upwelling ecosystem to EN events. Scattered data on coastal benthic communities workpackage 1, coastal ichthyologic resources, pelagic-benthic processes and riverine input on coastal systems workpackage 2 will be compiled and analyzed comparatively under EN and non-EN conditions. Further, ecophysiological constraints and aquacultural demands workpackage 3 will be addressed. All results of the CENSOR project will be integrated in a database and made available to the managers of marine environments and resources as well as to the public at large workpackage 4.

Further Information:

Project Organization    Download CENSOR-Flyer as PDF (6 mb)