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1.
European Maritime States already have commitments to protect species and habitats and maintain quality standards in coastal and offshore waters. These are a direct response to environmental legislation in Europe and commitments made to biodiversity conservation in OSPAR and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. An integrated approach to management requires that these are consistent with the requirements for sustainable development, and include wider social considerations and active stakeholder participation. This review describes a hierarchical framework that incorporates the marine objectives and delivery statements of ecological, social and economic sectors. The framework leads from the UK's guiding principles for sustainable development, through visionary statements and strategic goals for high level delivery, to operational objectives and statements of action which deliver management. Parts of this hierarchy can already be populated for the UK, especially those at the higher levels. At the operational level, however, there is less clarity. The review shows that, despite some gaps, existing commitments for ecological components of the ecosystem are transparent and generally conform to this framework, due largely to high profile government funding of environmental protection and science and a single national vision for the marine environment. Specific objectives for six components of the ecosystem were developed; benthic habitats, seabirds and mammals, phytoplankton and zooplankton, fish, and physical/chemical quality of the water and atmosphere. The objectives included some that avoided limits and others that aimed to achieve targets, and for management to be effective it will be important to have a common understanding of how these can together be interpreted and made operational. In a review of 13 social and economic sectors, few provided a clear breakdown of objectives leading from a high level vision or a sustainable development principle. Six sectors did not have high level government targets for production or other measures of sectoral performance. Such commercial operations generally determine their own operational delivery targets based on market forces. Recent proposals in Europe to create an integrated framework for social, economic and environmental activities will need to carefully balance the development of a strong and competitive marine economy with existing international obligations to environmental protection.  相似文献   

2.
Adaptive management of the marine environment requires an understanding of the complex interactions within it. Establishing levels of natural variability within and between marine ecosystems is a necessary prerequisite to this process and requires a monitoring programme which takes account of the issues of time, space and scale. In this paper, we argue that an ecosystem approach to managing the marine environment should take direct account of climate change indicators at a regional level if it is to cope with the unprecedented change expected as a result of human impacts on the earth climate system. We discuss the purpose of environmental monitoring and the importance of maintaining long-term time series. Recommendations are made on the use of these data in conjunction with modern extrapolation and integration tools (e.g. ecosystem models, remote sensing) to provide a diagnostic approach to the management of marine ecosystems, based on adaptive indicators and dynamic baselines.  相似文献   

3.
Assessing health of the Bay of Fundy--concepts and framework   总被引:8,自引:0,他引:8  
A discussion of health and ecosystem health (EH) concepts and a conceptual framework for assessing health of the Bay of Fundy are presented. The framework includes:Concepts--What is health? What is EH and marine ecosystem health (MEH)? How does EH relate to other closely related concepts and principles i.e. environmental quality (especially marine or MEQ), ecosystem integrity, and ecosystem sustainability?Importance--Why is EH important, and what are the linkages to people i.e. human health?Approaches and techniques--How do we monitor and measure EH, and in that context, ecosystem or ecological change? i.e. What are the monitoring approaches and tools? What is an appropriate set of EH indicators and indices for the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine? At the present time, can we make unequivocal statements about the status and trends in EH measures of the Bay of Fundy? Do we have adequate guidelines, objectives and standards for assessing environmental quality and EH?Connecting with management needs--Do we have adequate mechanisms in place to address MEH, marine environmental quality (MEQ), and environmental sustainability in the Bay of Fundy? What is the role of periodic marine assessments (state of the marine environment reports) in this activity? What kinds of new directions and new ecosystem science should be given priority? What kinds of other new activities should be pursued?For the Bay of Fundy Coastal Forum at the recent 5th BOFEP Bay of Fundy Science Workshop (May 2002), five core questions flowing from the health framework served to initiate and focus the discussions:Current state--What is the present health or condition of the Bay of Fundy?Changes--Are conditions improving or deteriorating?Indicators--What kinds of indicators do we consider most useful in trying to answer these questions?Existing resources--Are there adequate resources (e.g. institutional, financial, scientific, regulatory) to protect or restore the health of the Bay?Needs--What kinds of new information and approaches do we need to protect the health of the Bay?The background information and ideas of this paper were intended to assist discussion at the Fundy workshop, and to help identify the next steps, both individual and collective, for assessing the health of the Bay of Fundy.  相似文献   

4.
快速有效的生物监测指标对于评估、保护、管理和恢复淡水生态系统至关重要.传统评估方法主要利用指示生物或类群的出现率和多度信息,但是忽略了水体环境中“生物”与“生物”,以及“生物”与“环境”间相互作用的复杂关系,而这些相互作用对淡水生态系统的生物多样性、生态系统服务功能以及生态系统对环境变化的响应有着深刻影响.生物共现网络是群落水平物种互作的结构模型,通过物种在群落出现及丰度数据,描述了物种间潜在的相互作用、群落的基本结构,反映群落在生态系统的功能和结构特性.生物共现网络展示了淡水生态系统中所有生物体之间潜在的相互作用关系,其拓扑结构特性可与特定的生态系统状态相关联,能够揭示生态系统的组织规律及其功能,可作为早期的、灵敏的生物指标,是一种很有应用前景的评估淡水生态系统状态和稳定性的工具.  相似文献   

5.
An understanding of undesirable disturbance to the balance of organisms is needed to diagnose marine eutrophication as defined by EU Directives and OSPAR. This review summarizes the findings of the UK Defra-funded Undesirable Disturbance Study Team, which concluded that 'an undesirable disturbance is a perturbation of a marine ecosystem that appreciably degrades the health or threatens the sustainable human use of that ecosystem'. A methodology is proposed for detecting disturbance of temperate salt-water communities dominated by phytoplanktonic or phytobenthic primary producers. It relies on monitoring indicators of ecosystem structure and vigour, which are components of health. Undesirable disturbance can be diagnosed by accumulating evidence of ecohydrodynamic type-specific changes in: (i) bulk indicators; (ii) frequency statistics; (iii) flux measurements; (iv) structural indicators; and (v) indicator species. These are exemplified by (i) chlorophyll, transparency, dissolved oxygen, and opportunistic seaweed cover; (ii) HABs frequency; (iii) primary production; (iv) benthic and planktonic 'trophic indices'; (v) seagrasses and Nephrops norvegicus. Ecological Quality Objectives are proposed for some of these. Linking the diagnosis to eutrophication requires correlation of changes with nutrient enrichment. The methodology, which requires the development of a plankton community index and emphasizes the importance of primary production as an indicator of vigour, can be harmonized with the EU Water Framework Directive and OSPAR's Strategy to Combat Eutrophication.  相似文献   

6.
本文以鄱阳湖流域为例,所描述的流域可持续发展框架是一个基于流域系统理论和实践的生态系统模型.包括了三个主要的部分:(1)环境政策与规划;(2)地球空间信息系统;(3)社区发展与区域网络.框架将多个学科,如:流域生态学,环境规划,可持续发展与资源管理汇集一起,形成了一套综合的流域制图、模拟和监测的流域管理方法.  相似文献   

7.
We have investigated the impact of a large mussel farm on the benthic environment using a battery of benthic indicators of environmental quality (including biochemical, microbial and meiofaunal parameters). These were analysed through a multi-control sampling strategy over one year. The differences across the seasons are typically higher than those between the impacted and the control stations. No effects are seen in terms of the sediment oxygen penetration and the downward fluxes (as the total mass, organic and phytopigment fluxes). The indicators based on the biochemical compositions of the sediment organic matter and the microbial parameters also show no evidence of the eutrophication process, except as a slight increase in the bacterial density in the sediments beneath the long-lines of the farm during the period of highest mussel stocks. Finally, no effects are observed in terms of the benthic faunal indicators, as the meiofaunal abundance, the community structure and the taxa richness are all indistinguishable between the farm sediments and the controls. These results show that mussel farming in the investigated system is eco-sustainable and does not significantly alter the coastal marine ecosystem, both in terms of the functioning and the trophic state. The battery of indicators selected in this study represents a useful tool for the monitoring of the potential ecological impact of mussel farms, towards guaranteeing the sustainable development of aquacultures in shallow coastal environments.  相似文献   

8.
9.
Targets for improvements in water quality entering the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been set through the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (Reef Plan). To measure and report on progress towards the targets set a program has been established that combines monitoring and modelling at paddock through to catchment and reef scales; the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program (Paddock to Reef Program). This program aims to provide evidence of links between land management activities, water quality and reef health. Five lines of evidence are used: the effectiveness of management practices to improve water quality; the prevalence of management practice adoption and change in catchment indicators; long-term monitoring of catchment water quality; paddock & catchment modelling to provide a relative assessment of progress towards meeting targets; and finally marine monitoring of GBR water quality and reef ecosystem health. This paper outlines the first four lines of evidence.  相似文献   

10.
Marine biodiversity in almost all oceans is being threatened at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. The marine ecosystem is being degraded and the extinction rate of marine organisms has accelerated. In this paper, the potential causes of fishery resource exhaustion in the East China Sea are analyzed, including the change in the stoichiometric composition of seawater with regard to the concentrations of N and P, toxic effects of marine pollution, marine habitat destruction, increased seawater temperatures caused by climate warming, ocean acidification, pressure from overfishing, and the spread of marine pathogenic bacteria. It is believed that the factors mentioned above have significant impact on the exhaustion of fishery resources in the East China Sea. However, considering the cumulative, synergistic, and superimposed effects as well as the amplification effects resulting from their interactions, the actual risk of ecological extinction of marine organisms might be even more severe than that previously estimated. Hence, ecosystem management and research focused on a single risk factor or influencing factor is not enough to prevent marine ecosystem degradation and fishery resource exhaustion. A comprehensive, systematic, effective, and ecosystem-based management policy is imperative for healthy and sustainable fishery development in the East China Sea.  相似文献   

11.
Effective tools for monitoring the status of ecological restoration projects are critical for the management of restoration programs. Such tools must integrate disparate data comprised of multiple variables that describe restoration status, including the condition of environmental stressors, landscape connectivity, ecosystem resilience, and ecological structure and function, while communicating these concepts effectively to a wide range of stakeholders. In this paper we describe the process of constructing multimetric indices (MMIs) for monitoring restoration status for restoration projects currently underway on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. During this process, an initial suite of measurements is filtered for response and sensitivity to ecosystem stressors, eliminating measurements that provide little information and reducing future monitoring efforts. The retained measurements are rescaled into comparable domain metrics and assembled into MMIs. The MMIs are presented in terms of established restoration theories, including restoration trajectory and restoration endpoint targets.  相似文献   

12.
Distribution of metals, PAH's and PCB's in lobsters, mussels, and sediments were used to assess marine environmental quality of the Bay of Fundy. This study demonstrates that the lobster (Homarus americanus) is a better bioindicator for monitoring contaminants in the marine environment and has a greater capacity for the uptake and accumulation of contaminants than the mussel (Mytilus edulis) and sediments. A definite pattern in the spatial distribution of lobster Cu, Cd, and Ag was evident. The distribution of organic contaminants for both mussels and lobsters in the Bay of Fundy lacked a spatial trend, and organic contaminants were undetectable in sediments from all sites. The Gulf Watch Programme, which monitors chemicals in mussels in the Bay of Fundy, did not indicate a problem with high levels of Cu, Cd, and Zn in the ecosystem. Analytes below the detection limit, such as in mussels and sediments, increase the difficulties of chemical analysis and detection for environmental monitoring. Deficiencies of mussels in monitoring the Bay of Fundy were discussed.  相似文献   

13.
Diatom indices are used to evaluate the ecological status of rivers but they have been rarely applied in estuaries. This study aimed to identify the diatom species indicating the main environmental gradients and pressures in a highly stratified estuary; and to evaluate the applicability of existing freshwater diatom indices. Marine influence due to salt-wedge intrusion and sea water mixing appeared as the main factor affecting diatom community. Three diatom assemblages were identified: indicators of riverine conditions (without marine influence), indicators of estuarine conditions (heterogeneous conditions with higher conductivities due to marine influence) and those specifically indicating well-established salt-wedge situations. Nowadays, the main human pressure affecting diatom community in the Ebro Estuary is the hydrological alteration resulting from flow regulation and abstraction. Several limitations were encountered in the application of diatom indices (e.g. inverse response with nutrients; ecologically important species not considered). Therefore, their use in estuaries should be done cautiously.  相似文献   

14.
Estuaries have long been regarded as environmentally naturally stressed areas because of the high degree of variability in their physico-chemical characteristics, for example oxygen, temperature and salinity in the water column and bed sediment dynamics. However, their biota is well-adapted to cope with that stress and so the areas may be regarded as resilient because of that inherent variability; their ability to absorb stress without adverse effects is regarded here as Environmental Homeostasis. Hence these areas may only be regarded as stressful for marine or freshwater-adapted organisms and that for estuarine organisms this environmental stress is regarded as a subsidy whereby they successfully capitalise on the stressful conditions. In addition, using examples of the estuarine fauna and flora, this article indicates that the characteristics of natural stress in estuaries are similar to those for anthropogenic stress. An over-reliance on ecosystem structural features, such as diversity, in quality indicators therefore makes the detection of the anthropogenic stress more difficult. This difficulty is termed the Estuarine Quality Paradox. Because of these difficulties, the article argues that functional characteristics either as well as or rather than structural ones should be used in detecting environmental perturbations in estuaries.  相似文献   

15.
Within the context of the European legislative (e.g. Water Framework Directive, Natura 2000 network) monitoring and assessment of wetland areas are of great significance. This research points out the relevance of spatially explicit habitat models as an essential part of a decision support system for lake shore management. The Great Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus L.) was selected as a key species of aquatic reed structures. Many results of investigation about breeding behaviour of this German Red List species are available. The factors of selecting a breeding range were modelled in a Geographic Information System (GIS) using indices that quantify the corresponding spatial characteristics of patches in the ecosystem (e.g. shape complexity or distance to other vegetation structures). A habitat suitability map was created for a nature conservation area at Lake Constance, Germany. The observed breeding places in the investigation area showed a great coincidence with the modelled habitat ranges. This modelling approach of integrating spatial indicators is an important basis to provide automated monitoring systems based on remote sensing methods.  相似文献   

16.
Sustainable management of coastal and coral reef environments requires regular collection of accurate information on recognized ecosystem health indicators. Satellite image data and derived maps of water column and substrate biophysical properties provide an opportunity to develop baseline mapping and monitoring programs for coastal and coral reef ecosystem health indicators. A significant challenge for satellite image data in coastal and coral reef water bodies is the mixture of both clear and turbid waters. A new approach is presented in this paper to enable production of water quality and substrate cover type maps, linked to a field based coastal ecosystem health indicator monitoring program, for use in turbid to clear coastal and coral reef waters. An optimized optical domain method was applied to map selected water quality (Secchi depth, Kd PAR, tripton, CDOM) and substrate cover type (seagrass, algae, sand) parameters. The approach is demonstrated using commercially available Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper image data over a coastal embayment exhibiting the range of substrate cover types and water quality conditions commonly found in sub-tropical and tropical coastal environments. Spatially extensive and quantitative maps of selected water quality and substrate cover parameters were produced for the study site. These map products were refined by interactions with management agencies to suit the information requirements of their monitoring and management programs.  相似文献   

17.
It is proposed that a new, fifth era should be added to the four historical phases of marine research identified by Rupert Riedl, specifically an era devoted to studying and ameliorating disturbed marine ecosystems. In an age of global environmental deterioration, many marine ecosystems and organisms are high on the list of threatened entities. This poor status prompts research that would otherwise have been unnecessary and hinders research that would normally have been conducted. I argue that research into intact marine ecosystems is becoming increasingly difficult, and that most of our future insights into marine habitats will stem from knowledge gained by examining various disfunctions of those systems rather than their functions. The new era will therefore differ from past research in its underlying aim, the range of topics studied, the selection and funding of those topics, the validity of its conclusions, and in its urgency. Sea turtles and cetaceans are cited as case studies at the organismic level, shallow-water benthic communities, including coral reefs, at the ecosystem level.  相似文献   

18.
It can be argued that the intensity of monitoring of coastal marine environments lags behind the equivalent terrestrial environments. This results in a paucity of long-term time series of key environmental parameters such as turbidity. This lack of management information of the sources and sinks, and causes and impacts of stressors to the coastal marine environment, along with a lack of co-ordination of information collection is compromising the ability of environmental impact assessments of major coastal developments to discriminate between local and remote anthropogenic impacts, and natural or background processes. In particular, the quasi outsourcing of the collection of coastal information can lead to a perverse incentive whereby in many cases nobody is actively or consistently monitoring the coastal marine environment effectively. This is particularly the case with regards to the collection of long-term and whole-of-system scale data. This lack of effective monitoring can act to incentivise poor environmental performance.  相似文献   

19.
As lake ecosystem assessment is the foundation to achieve lake monitoring, environmental management and ecological restoration, a new concept of lake ecosystem health and driving force-pressure-state-impact-response-management framework was proposed to find out the causal relationship of the system and health distance model was taken to represent the health level of ecosystem. An assessment indicator system comprised of water quality, ecological and socio-economic criteria was established. The evaluation models were applied for the assessment of the ecosystem health level of a typical lake, Nansi Lake, China. Depends on the values of health distance, the heath level was described as 5°: very healthy, healthy, general healthy, sub-healthy and diseased. Using field investigation data and statistic data within the theory and applied models, the results of comprehensive assessment show that: (1) the health distances of water quality indicators, ecological indicators, socio-economic indicators and comprehensive health distance were 0.3989, 0.2495, 0.4983 and 0.4362, respectively. The health level was in general healthy condition. Ecological indicators were in healthy condition, which indicate that the stability was high. The distance of water quality had shown a tendency to approach general healthy level. As the health distance of socio-economic indicators have shown a bad impact form human beings, more effective measures need to be developed. (2) The results of a case study demonstrated that the methods in this paper provide a similar result corresponding with the actual lake health condition. Therefore, this paper shows that the proposed method is efficient and worths generalization.  相似文献   

20.
Impacts of anthropogenic pollution on marine ecosystems are being addressed by legislation to protect and restore coastal and transitional waters. A range of biological measures have been investigated for their ability to indicate anthropogenic disturbance in subtidal soft-sediment habitats, but little work to date has focussed in intertidal habitats. This study investigated the sensitivity of communities, individual taxa, diversity indices and biotic indices to nutrient and organic enrichment in intertidal soft-sediment habitats. Variation in macrofaunal communities was more strongly associated with anthropogenic stressors than with natural environmental variation. Two multimetric indices, M-AMBI and IQI, were more closely associated with nutrient and organic pollution than the AMBI and ITI indices. Intertidal monitoring based on existing monitoring tools offers a cost effective alternative to subtidal monitoring and has potential to form the basis for an ecosystem level approach.  相似文献   

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