How will life in the oceans respond to environmental change? With our increasing awareness and concern for human impact on the marine environment and its role in regulating global climate, the need for predicting the future of life in the ocean becomes pressing. The goal of the centre is to develop a fundamental understanding and predictive capability of marine ecosystems.
The centre will establish a cross-disciplinary research activity and develop novel trait-based approaches and models to meet this goal. The work is organized around three main research activities:
- Identification and mechanistic description of the traits and trade-offs required to characterize the various life forms in the ocean through experimental and theoretical work as well as analysis of literature data
- Scaling of individual behavior to population and ecosystem dynamics through the development of trait-based models, and
- Testing model prediction by comparing to observed trait patterns in the ocean
The centre brings together biologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians from three Danish universities, funds PhD and postdoctoral fellows, offers PhD summer schools, international workshops, and operates a Researcher Visitors Centre.
Centre for Ocean Life is a Villum Kann Rasmussen Centre of excellence for the study of life in a changing ocean. The centre opened on January 1, 2012. The centre director is Prof. Thomas Kiørboe and deputy director is Prof. Ken H. Andersen.
Download 5-year report of Centre for Ocean Life 2012-2016 (pdf)
Download extension of Centre for Ocean Life 2018- (pdf)
Download description of Centre for Ocean Life 2012-1017 (pdf)
Here are examples of our trait-based models: