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Human activities at sea can produce pressures and cumulative effects on ecosystem components that need to be monitored and assessed in a cost-effective manner. Five Horizon European projects have joined forces to collaboratively increase our knowledge and skills to monitor and assess the ocean in an innovative way, assisting managers and policy-makers in taking decisions to maintain sustainable activities at sea. Here, we present and discuss the status of some methods revised during a summer school, aiming at better management of coasts and seas. We include novel methods to monitor the coastal and ocean waters (e.g. environmental DNA, drones, imaging and artificial intelligence, climate modelling and spatial planning) and innovative tools to assess the status (e.g. cumulative impacts assessment, multiple pressures, Nested Environmental status Assessment Tool (NEAT), ecosystem services assessment or a new unifying approach). As a concluding remark, some of the most important challenges ahead are assessing the pros and cons of novel methods, comparing them with benchmark technologies and integrating these into long-standing time series for data continuity. This requires transition periods and careful planning, which can be covered through an intense collaboration of current and future European projects on marine biodiversity and ecosystem health.
Assuntos
Biodiversidade , Conservação dos Recursos Naturais , Ecossistema , Monitoramento Ambiental , Monitoramento Ambiental/métodos , Conservação dos Recursos Naturais/métodos , Humanos , Oceanos e Mares , Atividades HumanasRESUMO
Ecosystem services link the status of biodiversity and its functioning to societal goods and benefits contributing to human wellbeing. As such, they can play a key role in preserving the environment and managing natural resources and ecosystems to conserve nature's contributions to people. Identification of the main threats acting on the natural environment, and how these may impact its capacity to supply ecosystem services, is fundamental to the maintenance of these services. To that end, we present a novel approach based on a cumulative impacts assessment that 1) covers all relevant human activities and their pressures, 2) links impacts to the biotic groups that make up biodiversity and 3) provides an estimation of the Service Supply Potential based on the functioning of these biotic groups. Key proxy metrics to estimate this Service Supply Potential were identified from a literature review and quantified using a food web model (Ecopath with Ecosim). In addition to this quantitative information, the assessment of the capacity to supply ecosystem services was supplemented with expert judgement-based information to reflect the societal preferences that drive the allocation of human capital and turn these services into societal goods and benefits. As a proof of concept, the method was applied to the North Sea ecosystem. Results showed that, overall, the capacity of the North Sea to supply Cultural ecosystem services was most threatened, with an average potential decline of 50 % compared to an undisturbed situation. This was followed by the Provisioning ecosystem services with 46 % and the Regulation & Maintenance with 38 %. The main anthropogenic threats (excluding climate change) to the North Sea capacity to supply ecosystem services come primarily from fishing contributing to 51 % of the overall threat. Of the remaining 18 sectoral activities another 23 % was contributed by mining, non-renewable energy, tourism, and agriculture.
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Biodiversidade , Conservação dos Recursos Naturais , Ecossistema , Conservação dos Recursos Naturais/métodos , Monitoramento Ambiental/métodos , Cadeia AlimentarRESUMO
Currently most Cumulative Impacts Assessments (CIAs) are risk-based approaches that assess the potential impact of human activities and their pressures on the ecosystem thereby compromising the achievement of policy objectives. While some of these CIAs apply actual data (usually spatial distributions) they often have to rely on categorical scores based on expert judgement if they actually assess impact which is often expressed as a relative measure that is difficult to interpret in absolute terms. Here we present a first step-wise approach to conduct a fully quantitative CIA based on the selection and subsequent application of the best information available. This approach systematically disentangles risk into its exposure and effect components that can be quantified using known ecological information, e.g. spatial distribution of pressures or species, pressure-state relationships and population dynamics models with appropriate parametrisation, resulting in well-defined assessment endpoints that are meaningful and can be easily communicated to the recipients of advice. This approach requires that underlying assumptions and methodological considerations are made explicit and translated into a measure of confidence. This transparency helps to identify the possible data-handling or methodological decisions and shows the resulting improvement through its confidence assessment of the applied information and hence the resulting accuracy of the CIA. To illustrate this approach, we applied it in a North Sea CIA focussing on two sectors, i.e. fisheries and offshore windfarms, and how they impact the ecosystem and its components, i.e. seabirds, seabed habitats and marine mammals through various pressures. The results provide a "proof of concept" for this generic approach as well as rigorous definitions of several of the concepts often used as part of risk-based approaches, e.g. exposure, sensitivity, vulnerability, and how these can be estimated using actual data. As such this widens the scope for increasingly more quantitative CIAs using the best information available.
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Ecossistema , Pesqueiros , Animais , Conservação dos Recursos Naturais , Atividades Humanas , Humanos , Mar do NorteRESUMO
This study provides an integrated perspective to ecosystem based management (EBM) by considering a diverse array of societal goals, i.e. sustainable food supply, clean energy and a healthy marine ecosystem, and a selection of management measures to achieve them. The primary aim of this exercise is to provide guidance for (more) integrated EBM in the North Sea based on an evaluation of the effectiveness of those management measures in contributing to the conservation of marine biodiversity. A secondary aim is to identify the requirements of the knowledge base to guide such future EBM initiatives. Starting from the societal goals we performed a scoping exercise to identify a "focal social-ecological system" which is a subset of the full social-ecological system but considered adequate to guide EBM towards the achievement of those societal goals. A semi-quantitative risk assessment including all the relevant human activities, their pressures and the impacted ecosystem components was then applied to identify the main threats to the North Sea biodiversity and evaluate the effectiveness of the management measures to mitigate those threats. This exercise revealed the need for such risk-based approaches in providing a more integrated perspective but also the trade-off between being comprehensive but qualitative versus quantitative but limited in terms of the "focal" part of the SES that can be covered. The findings in this paper provide direction to the (further) development of EBM and its knowledge base that should ultimately allow an integrated perspective while maintaining its capacity to deliver the accuracy and detail needed for decision-making.
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Aquatic ecosystems are under severe pressure. Human activities introduce an array of pressures that impact ecosystems and their components. In this study we focus on the aquatic domains of fresh, coastal and marine waters, including rivers, lakes and riparian habitats to transitional, coastal as well as shelf and oceanic habitats. In an environmental risk assessment approach, we identified impact chains that link 45 human activities through 31 pressures to 82 ecosystem components. In this linkage framework >22,000 activity-pressure-ecosystem component interactions were found across seven European case studies. We identified the environmental impact risk posed by each impact chain by first categorically weighting the interactions according to five criteria: spatial extent, dispersal potential, frequency of interaction, persistence of pressure and severity of the interaction, where extent, dispersal, frequency and persistence account for the exposure to risk (spatial and temporal), and the severity accounts for the consequence of the risk. After assigning a numerical score to each risk criterion, we came up with an overall environmental impact risk score for each impact chain. This risk score was analysed in terms of (1) the activities and pressures that introduce the greatest risk to European aquatic domains, and (2) the aquatic ecosystem components and realms that are at greatest risk from human activities. Activities related to energy production were relevant across the aquatic domains. Fishing was highly relevant in marine and environmental engineering in fresh waters. Chemical and physical pressures introduced the greatest risk to the aquatic realms. Ecosystem components that can be seen as ecotones between different ecosystems had high impact risk. We show how this information can be used in informing management on trade-offs in freshwater, coastal and marine resource use and aid decision-making.
Assuntos
Conservação dos Recursos Hídricos/métodos , Ecossistema , Água Doce/química , Atividades Humanas/tendências , Água do Mar/química , Poluição da Água/análise , Organismos Aquáticos/efeitos dos fármacos , Humanos , Medição de Risco , Poluição da Água/efeitos adversosRESUMO
The capacity of ecosystems to supply ecosystem services is decreasing. Sustaining this supply requires an understanding of the links between the impacts of pressures introduced by human activities and how this can lead to changes in the supply of services. Here, we apply a novel approach, assessing 'risk to ecosystem service supply' (RESS), across a range of aquatic ecosystems in seven case studies. We link aggregate impact risk from human activities on ecosystem components, with a relative score of their potential to supply services. The greatest RESS is found where an ecosystem component with a high potential to supply services is subject to high impact risk. In this context, we explore variability in RESS across 99 types of aquatic ecosystem component from 11 realms, ranging from oceanic to wetlands. We explore some causes of variability in the RESS observed, including assessment area, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and population density. We found that Lakes, Rivers, Inlets and Coastal realms had some of the highest RESS, though this was highly dependent on location. We found a positive relationship between impact risk and service supply potential, indicating the ecosystem components we rely on most for services, are also those most at risk. However, variability in this relationship indicates that protecting the supply of ecosystem services alone will not protect all parts of the ecosystem at high risk. Broad socio-economic factors explained some of the variability found in RESS. For example, RESS was positively associated with GDP and artificial and agricultural land use in most realms, highlighting the need to achieve balance between increasing GDP and sustaining ecosystem health and human wellbeing more broadly. This approach can be used for sustainable management of ecosystem service use, to highlight the ecosystem components most critical to supplying services, and those most at risk.
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Global initiatives have been increasingly focusing on mainstreaming the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision-making at all levels. Due to the accelerated rate at which biodiversity is declining and its consequences for the functioning of ecosystems and subsequently, the services they provide, there is need to develop comprehensive assessments of the services and the benefits nature delivers to society. Based on expert evaluation, we identified relevant flow linkages in the supply-side of the socio-ecological system, i.e. from biodiversity to ecosystem services supply for eight case studies across European aquatic ecosystems covering freshwater, transitional, coastal and marine waters realms. Biological mediated services were considered, as well as those reliant on purely physical aspects of the ecosystem, i.e. abiotic outputs, since both have implications for spatial planning, management and decision-making. Due to the multidimensional nature of ecosystems and their biodiversity, our approach used ecosystem components such as habitats and biota as proxies for biodiversity and as the focal point for linkage identification. Statistical analysis revealed the importance of considering mobile biota in the spatial assessment of habitats. Contrary to literature evidences so far, our results showed significantly different and complementary ecosystem services supply patterns across the continuum of aquatic realms. The implemented score of ecosystem services supply has a high potential for integrated aquatic ecosystem service supply assessments in the context of ecosystem-based management.