Environmental health indicators

Abstract Ecologists have proposed hundreds of quantitative indicators of the status of ecosystems for evaluation of and reporting on the status of marine ecosystems. The talk applies a common approach to classifying indicators, summarises the main properties of each class of indicator, and provides some illustrations. Indicators of ecosystem status have roles in both communication and decision support. For both roles, strengths and weaknesses of indicators are usually only partially known. Few have been tested systematically for sensitivity and robustness across a range of contexts… However, to determine best practices for selecting indicators for specific uses, one must have a fairly complete understanding of the information content of the various indicators. The paper explores some alternative approaches to documenting the information content of various indicators of ecosystem status. As the Precautionary Approach becomes broadly used as the basis for management decision-making, the role of indicators of ecosystem status becomes central. The PA is made operational in decision-making through use of indicators and reference points. This means that it is necessary to identify values of an ecosystem indicator associated with harm to the environment that is serious or difficult to reverse. Methods for identifying and justifying reference points for ecosystem indicators are being developed and tested, but the task is turning out to be complex. Alternative strategies for identifying reference points are reviewed. When choices must be made from a suite of candidate indicators, it is desirable make the selection on objective grounds. This requires explicit a priori criteria, on which there is not yet scientific consensus. Recent developments in this area are reviewed, and again a way forward proposed.

[1]  M. Hill,et al.  Data analysis in community and landscape ecology , 1987 .

[2]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  Ecopath, Ecosim, and Ecospace as tools for evaluating ecosystem impact of fisheries , 2000 .

[3]  G A Rose,et al.  Hyperaggregation of fish and fisheries: how catch-per-unit-effort increased as the northern cod (Gadus morhua) declined , 1999 .

[4]  K. Clarke.  Comparisons of dominance curves , 1990 .

[5]  F. W. Preston.  The Commonness, And Rarity, of Species , 1948 .

[6]  Ian F. Spellerberg,et al.  Monitoring Ecological Change: Index , 1991 .

[7]  J. Rice.  3 Changes to the large marine ecosystem of the Newfoundland-Labrador shelf , 2002 .

[8]  Structure of the Body-Size Spectrum of the Biomass in Aquatic Ecosystems: A Consequence of Allometry in Predator–Prey Interactions , 1993 .

[9]  C. Helstrom,et al.  Statistical theory of signal detection , 1968 .

[10]  P. Yodzis,et al.  Predator-Prey Theory and Management of Multispecies Fisheries , 1994 .

[11]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Evaluating fishery impacts using metrics of community structure , 2000 .

[12]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Patterns of change in the size spectra of numbers and diversity of the North Sea fish assemblage, as reflected in surveys and models , 1996 .

[13]  M. Hill.  Correspondence Analysis: A Neglected Multivariate Method , 1974 .

[14]  Jake C. Rice,et al.  Modelling the response of size and diversity spectra of fish assemblages to changes in exploitation , 1998 .

[15]  L. M. Dickie,et al.  Biomass Spectra of Aquatic Ecosystems in Relation to Fisheries Yield , 1992 .

[16]  Keith Sainsbury,et al.  Impact of fishing on size composition and diversity of demersal fish communities , 2000 .

[17]  W. P. Williams,et al.  Measuring the responses of macroinvertebrate communities to water pollution: a comparison of multivariate approaches, biotic and diversity indices , 2004, Hydrobiologia.

[18]  K. M. Shaw,et al.  The detection of differences among assemblages of marine benthic species based on an assessment of dominance and diversity , 1983 .

[19]  A. Jarre-Teichmann,et al.  THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF MASS BALANCE MODELS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF UPWELLING ECOSYSTEMS , 1998 .

[20]  K. R. Clarke,et al.  New \'biodiversity\' measures reveal a decrease in taxonomic distinctness with increasing stress , 1995 .

[21]  J. Kruskal.  Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis , 1964 .

[22]  R. Whittaker,et al.  GRADIENT ANALYSIS OF VEGETATION* , 1967, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[23]  Stuart L. Pimm,et al.  The Dynamics of Multispecies, Multi-Life-Stage Models of Aquatic Food Webs , 1987 .

[24]  C. Walters,et al.  Structuring dynamic models of exploited ecosystems from trophic mass-balance assessments , 1997, Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

[25]  M. Bradford,et al.  Assessing and protecting endangered marine species , 2000 .

[26]  P. Townsley.  Social issues in fisheries , 1998 .

[27]  N. Daan,et al.  Introduction: Changes in the North Sea Ecosystem and Their Causes: Århus 1975 Revisted , 1996 .

[28]  C. Philippart.  Long-term impact of bottom fisheries on several by-catch species of demersal fish and benthic invertebrates in the south-eastern North Sea , 1998 .

[29]  S. McNaughton,et al.  Relationships among Functional Properties of Californian Grassland , 1967, Nature.

[30]  P. Yodzis,et al.  Introduction to Theoretical Ecology , 1989 .

[31]  K. Drinkwater,et al.  Testing predictions of marine fish and shellfish landings from environmental variables , 1987 .

[32]  T. Dix,et al.  Relating Benthic Infaunal Community Structure to Environmental Variables in Estuaries using Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling and Similarity Analysis , 1998 .

[33]  Joel E. Cohen,et al.  Community Food Webs: Data and Theory , 1990 .

[34]  G. Mace.  The development of new criteria for listing species on the IUCN Red List. , 1992 .

[35]  J. Gorostiaga,et al.  Phytobenthic Intertidal Community Structure Along an Environmental Pollution Gradient , 1999 .

[36]  Brian Groombridge,et al.  1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals , 1996 .

[37]  Hugh G. Gauch,et al.  Multivariate analysis in community ecology , 1984 .

[38]  S. R. Kerr,et al.  SIZE-DEPENDENT PROCESSES UNDERLYING REGULARITIES IN ECOSYSTEM STRUCTURE' , 1987 .

[39]  Michel J. Kaiser,et al.  The effects of fishing on marine ecosystems , 1998 .

[40]  K. R. Clarke,et al.  A Method Of Linking Multivariate Community Structure To Environmental Variables , 1993 .

[41]  John F. Piatt,et al.  Community reorganization in the Gulf of Alaska following ocean climate regime shift , 1999 .

[42]  Stephen J. Hall,et al.  The Effects Of Fishing On Mariane Ecosystems And Communities , 1998 .

[43]  A. Magurran.  Ecological Diversity and Its Measurement , 1988, Springer Netherlands.

[44]  M. Hill.  Diversity and Evenness: A Unifying Notation and Its Consequences , 1973 .

[45]  B. Menge,et al.  Indirect Effects in Marine Rocky Intertidal Interaction Webs: Patterns and Importance , 1995 .

[46]  J. J. Beukema,et al.  An evaluation of the ABC-method (abundance/biomass comparison) as applied to macrozoobenthic communities living on tidal flats in the Dutch Wadden Sea , 1988 .

[47]  M. Zacharias,et al.  Use of focal species in marine conservation and management: a review and critique , 2001 .