Selecting Indicator Portfolios for Marine Species and Food Webs: A Puget Sound Case Study

Abstract

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as a promising approach for maintaining the benefits humans want and need from the ocean, yet concrete approaches for implementing EBM remain scarce. A key challenge lies in the development of indicators that can provide useful information on ecosystem status and trends, and assess progress towards management goals. In this paper, we describe a generalized framework for the methodical and transparent selection of ecosystem indicators. We apply the framework to the second largest estuary in the United States – Puget Sound, Washington – where one of the most advanced EBM processes is currently underway. Rather than introduce a new method, this paper integrates a variety of familiar approaches into one step-by-step approach that will lead to more consistent and reliable reporting on ecosystem condition. Importantly, we demonstrate how a framework linking indicators to policy goals, as well as a clearly defined indicator evaluation and scoring process, can result in a portfolio of useful and complementary indicators based on the needs of different users (e.g., policy makers and scientists). Although the set of indicators described in this paper is specific to marine species and food webs, we provide a general approach that could be applied to any set of management objectives or ecological system.

The science and politics of human well-being: a case study in cocreating indicators for Puget Sound restoration

“…The research team asked the Partnership decision makers (ECB and LC) to rate the 23 indicators provided by stakeholders. To facilitate this process, relevant criteria were selected from a larger list of criteria used in the adoption of marine ecological indicators in the Puget Sound and across the United States (Kurtz et al 2001, Kershner et al 2011; Table 1). These criteria were approved by the Partnership SP prior to eliciting responses.…”

“…Data for continuous time series derived indicators. For the social scientists, we selected 11 criteria from the same original list (Kershner et al 2011) that were associated with the theoretical and methodological robustness of the indicator. Again, these criteria were approved by the Partnership SP for their scientific rigor prior to eliciting responses.…”

Marine ecosystem services: Linking indicators to their classification

“…An "honest declaration" of uncertainty is needed (Müller and Burkhard, 2012) and different decision contexts may need different degrees of precision. Scoring procedures could be employed to demonstrate how well indicators are supported by scientific evidence, to assess the quality of the indicators selected and their potential utility to management activities (Kershner et al, 2011).…”

Distinguishing benchmarks of biological status from management reference points: A case study on Pacific salmon in Canada

“…Identifying multi-species or ecosystem benchmarks and objectives will require input from diverse fields of expertise and resource sectors. Furthermore, ecosystem reference points and the indicators on which they are based can be developed in relation to the population sizes of a species of interest, population trends, community composition, and energy or material flow (Kershner et al 2011). Multiattribute ecosystem-based control rules for fisheries can be identified when ecosystem indicators are related to fishery-induced changes (see Link 2005), but despite recent progress implementing an ecosystem-approach to fisheries management (Hollowed et al 2011;Link et al 2011), the application of such control rules is rare.…”