Essential ecological insights for marine ecosystem-based management and marine spatial planning

The abrupt decline in the sea's capacity to provide crucial ecosystem services requires a new ecosystem-based approach for maintaining and recovering biodiversity and integrity. Ecosystems are places, so marine spatial planners and managers must understand the heterogeneity of biological communities and their key components (especially apex predators and structure-forming species), and of key processes (e.g., population connectivity, interaction webs, biogeochemistry) that maintain them, as well as heterogeneity of human uses. Maintaining resistance and resilience to stressors is crucial. Because marine populations and ecosystems exhibit complex system behaviors, managers cannot safely assume they will recover when stressors are reduced, so prevention is a far more robust management strategy than seeking a cure for degraded systems.

[1]  Elliott A. Norse,et al.  Disturbance of the Seabed by Mobile Fishing Gear: A Comparison to Forest Clearcutting , 1998 .

[2]  Jennifer L. Molnar,et al.  Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas , 2007 .

[3]  L. Crowder,et al.  Resolving Mismatches in U.S. Ocean Governance , 2006, Science.

[4]  T. Gerrodette,et al.  Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity , 2007 .

[5]  L. Crowder,et al.  Metapopulation ecology and marine conservation , 2006 .

[6]  Claire B Paris-Limouzy,et al.  Connectivity of marine populations: open or closed? , 2000, Science.

[7]  Tinker,et al.  Killer whale predation on sea otters linking oceanic and nearshore ecosystems , 1998, Science.

[8]  E. Norse.  Ending the Range Wars on the Last Frontier: Zoning the Sea , 2005 .

[9]  Heather McGraw,et al.  Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle , 2004 .

[10]  H. Lenihan,et al.  HOW HABITAT DEGRADATION THROUGH FISHERY DISTURBANCE ENHANCES IMPACTS OF HYPOXIA ON OYSTER REEFS , 1998 .

[11]  Will F. Figueira,et al.  Source-sink population dynamics and the problem of siting marine reserves , 2000 .

[12]  Y. Sadovy,et al.  Are aggregation-fisheries sustainable? Reef fish fisheries as a case study , 2005, Coral Reefs.

[13]  H. Pulliam,et al.  Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation , 1988, The American Naturalist.

[14]  K. Martin,et al.  The missing layer: Geo-technologies, communities, and implications for marine spatial planning , 2008 .

[15]  E. K. Pikitch,et al.  Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management , 2004, Science.

[16]  J. N. Weber,et al.  Ecological studies of the coral predator Acanthaster planci in the south pacific , 1970 .

[17]  Sara M. Maxwell,et al.  Shifting gears: assessing collateral impacts of fishing methods in US waters , 2003 .

[18]  P. Burkill,et al.  Cascading Effects of the Loss of Apex Predatory Sharks from a Coastal Ocean , 2007 .

[19]  R. Paine.  Food webs : linkage, interaction strength and community infrastructure , 1980 .

[20]  Will F. Figueira,et al.  Defining patch contribution in source-sink metapopulations: the importance of including dispersal and its relevance to marine systems , 2006, Population Ecology.

[21]  K. Bjorndal,et al.  Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems , 2001, Science.

[22]  E. Norse.  Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Bio- , 2005 .

[23]  B. Neis,et al.  Inshore Stocks of Atlantic Cod Are Important for Rebuilding the East Coast Fishery , 2005 .

[24]  Jae S. Choi,et al.  Trophic Cascades in a Formerly Cod-Dominated Ecosystem , 2005, Science.

[25]  Will F. Figueira,et al.  Defining patch contribution in source-sink metapopulations: the importance of including dispersal and its relevance to marine systems , 2009, Population Ecology.

[26]  Karen L. McLeod,et al.  Ecosystem-based management for the oceans , 2009 .

[27]  E. Boyle,et al.  The global carbon cycle: a test of our knowledge of earth as a system. , 2000, Science.

[28]  Karen L. McLeod,et al.  Solving the Crisis in Ocean Governance: Place-Based Management of Marine Ecosystems , 2007 .

[29]  Larry B. Crowder,et al.  Place-Based Ecosystem Management in the Open Ocean , 2005 .