International Waters learning Exchange & Resource Network

Tales from a thousand and one ways to integrate marine ecosystem components when assessing the environmental status

Assessing the environmental status of marine ecosystems is useful when communicating key messages to policymakers or the society, reducing the complex information of the multiple ecosystem and biodiversity components and their important spatial and temporal variability into manageable units. Taking into account the ecosystem components to be addressed (e.g. biological, chemical, physical), the numerous biodiversity elements to be assessed (e.g. from microbes to sea mammals), the different indicators needed to be studied (e.g. in Europe, 56 indicators of status have been selected), and the different assessment scales to be undertaken (e.g. from local to regional sea scale), some criteria to define spatial scales and some guidance on aggregating and integrating information is needed.

28 jul. 2014

Tales from a thousand and one ways to integrate marine ecosystem components when assessing the environmental status.pdf

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