Quantifying cumulative impacts of human pressures on the marine environment: a geospatial modelling framework

Stelzenmüller, Vanessa; Lee, J.; South, Andy; Rogers, S. I.

doi:10.3354/meps08345

Cited by 103 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…That could be interpreted as a need for further research on the nature of P-S-I relations and the consistency in environmental targets for the descriptors involved, since our current state of knowledge on quantitative causal relations between pressures, state changes and impacts is limited. In addition, nearly all ecosystem components are subject to the true cumulative effects of many simultaneous pressures related to a range of human activities (Crain et al, 2008;Stelzenmüller et al, 2010;Knights et al, 2013). This means that, for some descriptors at least, there is a large scientific uncertainty associated with the definition of environmental targets and GEnS.…”

Section: One-out All-out (Ooao)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2014

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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. We have reviewed, from ecological and management perspectives, the approaches for aggregating and integrating currently available for marine status assessment in Europe and other regions of the world. Advantages and shortcomings of the different alternatives are highlighted. We provide some guidance on the steps toward defining rules for aggregation and integration of information at multiple levels of ecosystem organization, providing recommendations on when using specific rules in the assessment. A main conclusion is that any integration principle used should be ecologically-relevant, transparent and well documented, in order to make it comparable across different geographic regions.

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Section: One-out All-out (Ooao)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2014

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“…northern Europe). At present, taxonomic coverage is limited (Veltman et al, 2011;Stelzenmüller et al, 2010;Stelzenmüller et al, 2009) or not included (i.e. habitat recoverability only) (Foden et al, 2010;Nilsson and Ziegler, 2007).…”

Section: Quantitative Approaches and Lca Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Characterization factors are expressed as potentially affected fraction of species per volume of sediment. Stelzenmüller et al (2010) and Stelzenmüller et al (2009) quantified impacts of aggregate extraction on the UK continental shelf based on mapping of pressure occurrence and a spatially-explicit average species sensitivity index. This index links species occurrence probability with an index for single species sensitivity, which is based on habitat characteristics (e.g.…”

Section: Quantitative Approaches and Lca Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a meaningful assessment of marine ecological impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA)

Woods

Veltman

Huijbregts

et al. 2016

Environment International

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Human demands on marine resources and space are currently unprecedented and concerns are rising over observed declines in marine biodiversity. A quantitative understanding of the impact of industrial activities on the marine environment is thus essential. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely applied method for quantifying the environmental impact of products and processes. LCA was originally developed to assess the impacts of landbased industries on mainly terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. As such, impact indicators for major drivers of marine biodiversity loss are currently lacking. We review quantitative approaches for cause-effect assessment of seven major drivers of marine biodiversity loss: climate change, ocean acidification, eutrophication-induced hypoxia, seabed damage, overexploitation of biotic resources, invasive species and marine plastic debris. Our review shows that impact indicators can be developed for all identified drivers, albeit at different levels of coverage of cause-effect pathways and variable levels of uncertainty and spatial coverage. Modeling approaches to predict the spatial distribution and intensity of human-driven interventions in the marine environment are relatively well-established and can be employed to develop spatially-explicit LCA fate factors. Modeling approaches to quantify the effects of these interventions on marine biodiversity are less well-developed. We highlight specific research challenges to facilitate a coherent incorporation of marine biodiversity loss in LCA, thereby making LCA a more comprehensive and robust environmental impact assessment tool. Research challenges of particular importance include i) incorporation of the non-linear behavior of global circulation models (GCMs) within an LCA framework and ii) improving spatial differentiation, especially the representation of coastal regions in GCMs and ocean-carbon cycle models.

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“…As such, the results may be used as input in a process of stakeholder consultation which may lead to a final political decision taking account of the different valuation systems across stakeholders . The approach can easily be extended by including different fisheries (Murawski 1984) and integrated in a multi-criteria analysis to quantify the cumulative impacts of human pressures (Stelzenmüller et al 2010). …”

Section: Impact Of Spawning Closuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological and economic trade-offs in the management of mixed fisheries: a case study of spawning closures in flatfish fisheries

Rijnsdorp

Overzee²,

Poos³

2012

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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As a contribution to the ecosystem approach to fisheries management, we estimated the effects of spawning closures on stock status, ecosystem impacts and economic performance. We focused on the flatfish fishery in the North Sea and explored how spawning closures for plaice and sole contribute to sustainable management of 4 target species (sole, plaice, turbot and brill). Seasonal patterns in fishing effort and catchability by age group and area were estimated to quantify the effect of different spawning closure scenarios on the selection pattern. The scenario performance was evaluated using indicators of stock status (spawning stock biomass), economic performance of the fishery (yield, revenue) and ecosystem impact (discards, bycatch of cod and rays, seabed integrity, fisheries-induced evolution). In a single-species context, spawning closures may be beneficial for the target species, while in a mixed fisheries and ecosystem context, negative effects may occur. A spawning closure for plaice combines positive effects on the plaice stock and the revenue with reductions of the negative impact for several ecosystem indicators and only a small negative effect on sea bed integrity. The effects did not differ when evaluated at current levels of effort or at maximum sustainable yield (MSY) effort. Tailor-made solutions are required that need to be developed in stakeholder consultation to trade-off the ecological and economic objectives. Mixed-species MSY was lower than the sum of the single-species MSYs.

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Quantifying cumulative impacts of human pressures on the marine environment: a geospatial modelling framework

Cited by 103 publications

References 25 publications

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

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

Towards a meaningful assessment of marine ecological impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA)

Ecological and economic trade-offs in the management of mixed fisheries: a case study of spawning closures in flatfish fisheries

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