Lynne Shannon is Principal Researcher leading the Marine Sustainability group in the Department of Biological Sciences, and part of the Marine and Antarctic Research Centre for Innovation and Sustainability (MARIS) at the University of Cape Town.
She undertakes ecological research and modelling to inform marine ecosystem-based management and has published 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Having a broad appreciation of marine food web dynamics and issues, she has constructed trophic models of the Benguela region to provide an understanding of structure, functioning and changes in marine food webs off South Africa and Namibia, with a view to supporting ecosystem-based management.
A particular focus has been examination of the relative and combined effects of fishing and environmental forcing on the ecosystem dynamics of the Benguela, including regime shifts. She explores pragmatic ways in which ecosystem considerations might be incorporated into fisheries management, especially the use of ecological indicators. She co-chaired the international working group “IndiSeas” (www.indiseas.org), evaluating effects of fishing and natural variability on marine ecosystems using suites of ecological, environmental, biodiversity and human dimension indicators in comparative approach.
Lynne is the Benguela case study lead for two All Atlantic Alliance (Horizon 2020) projects, viz. “Triatlas” and “Mission Atlantic”, and is especially enthusiastic about her biodiversity science-policy work that has been undertaken as part of the” One Ocean Hub” UKRI project.
Lynne is Co-ordinating Lead Author of Chapter 2 “Visions of a sustainable world – for nature and people” of the Global Transformative Change Assessment currently underway in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
This page was updated in November 2024.
