Professor Martin Edwards

Professor Martin Edwards

Ocean Ecologist (Honorary Fellow)

maed2024-09-12@pml.ac.uk    |    
"My scientific interests surround environmental change impacts on marine ecosystems ranging from marine biodiversity, biogeographical and phenological changes to whole ecosystem regime shifts at the oceanic scale "

Martin Edwards is a Honorary Professor of Ocean Ecology at the University of Plymouth and has been previously the Research Director at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science. Since 2021 he has been an Honorary Fellow at PML. He has over 25 years experience in researching environmental change impacts on marine ecosystems. He was the main author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report on “Changes in marine ecosystems and fisheries’ and acted as a contributing author for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report on marine biogeography and Harmful Algal Blooms and climate change. Martin received an Inspiration Award in Ecosystem Science from the University of Oslo in 2012 in recognition of his contribution to the understanding of regime shifts on marine ecosystems. He is currently a member of the Pool of Experts for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment and contributed to the first and second United Nations World Ocean Assessments (WOA). Currently he serves on the Editorial Boards of two leading journals in the field and sits on a number of national and international working groups involved in marine observations and biological assessments.

Selected Publications

  • Kléparski, L., Beaugrand, G., Edwards, M., & Ostle, C. (2023). Phytoplankton life strategies, phenological shifts and climate change in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1850 to 2100. Global Change Biology, 29, 3833–3849. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16709
  • Edwards, M., Beaugrand, G., Kléparski, L. et al. Climate variability and multi-decadal diatom abundance in the Northeast Atlantic. Commun Earth Environ 3, 162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00492-9
  • Edwards, M., Goberville, E., Helaouet, P., Lindley, A., Atkinson, A., Burrows, M., Tarling, G. (2021). North Atlantic warming over six decades drives decreases in krill abundance with no associated range shift. Commun Biol 4, 644. 10.1038/s42003-021-02159-1
  • Burrows, M., Bates A.M, Costello, M.J., Edwards, M., Edgar, G., Fox, C., Benjamin Halpern, B.J., Hiddink, J., Pinsky, M.L., Batt, R.D., Molinos, J.C., Payne, B., Schoeman, D., Stuart-Smith, R.D. & Poloczanska. E. (2019). Ocean community warming responses explained by thermal affinities and temperature gradients. Nature Climate Change, 9: 959–963.
  • Beaugrand, G., Conversi, A.,Atkinson, A., Cloern, J., Chiba, S., S. Fonda-Umani, Kirby, K.K., Greene, C.H., Mantua, N., Goberville, E., Otto, S.A., Reid, P.C., Stemmann, L., Sugisaki, H. & Edwards, M. (2019). Unprecedented biological shifts in the global ocean. Nature Climate Change, 9: 237-243.