Oceanography Literature Review

For our final unit in Frontiers, we had to write a literature review on one of the Grand challenges in Marine Ecosystems Ecology while considering this guiding question: "How do you expand the frontiers of Ocean research?" We talked with a marine biologists about her experience working in the ocean and gathering data on dolphins. Her career shifted its path into improving the environment, and it was interesting to learn about how she incorporated her ocean experience into developing environmental solutions. After doing prior research on innovative ideas that have been developed to solve gases in the atmosphere, or lack of oxygen in the ocean, we dived into gathering resources on what grand challenge we wanted to review. I chose the status of integrative health assessments on marine systems. We learned how to use a synthesis matrix to organize main and sub ideas for the outline of this paper. I present to you my final action project for STEAM at GCE, my literature review on integrative health assessments:

While the complexity of marine assessment calculations holds uncertainty that can defer decision makers from regulating human activities, marine assessments provide concise data as an aid in formulating plans and policies to achieve overall health of oceans and humans in their relations and co-existence. For example, the economic approach to global health integration  reaches a wide audience so that people such as policy makers, scientists and managers work together to maintain natural structure in the ocean whilst keeping societal benefits. It has also been said that mechanisms of resilience can quicken recovery processes and strengthen persistence in adaptation from disturbances such as in fisheries, climate change, and ocean acidification. 

The economic approach exists to bring sustainability into “the use of goods of ecosystem goods and services and maintenance of ecosystem integrity” (Farmer et al., 2012). In order to pursue an economic approach in marine management, the assessment needed must be an ecosystem health monitoring program that identifies current or potential conflicts within the socio ecological ecosystem. “This then requires the development of hypotheses about how those stressors may affect the ecosystem and identifies measures of environmental quality and ecosystem health to test hypotheses.” (Borja et. al, 2019) To be specific, an arrangement of indicators are required to distinguish how far human pressure on marine systems go and the responses to it. A method created for this has been named the Cumulative impact method. Within this method, an abbreviated conceptual foundation to track cause and effects is called DAPSI(W)R(M), which stands for Driver, Activities, Pressures on the system, State changes, Impacts on human Welfare, and management Responses as Measures operate. The complexity of this concept includes space-time (physical and psychological) variables considering species, habitats, and ecosystems. “In the Finnish Archipelago Sea, a pilot study evaluated the effects of water depth and wave exposure (i.e., benthic energy) on the cumulative impacts in the index method” (Sahala, 2015).  Overall, cumulative impacts have become a popularly used element of marine assessments. This would aid in the economic approach because it includes psychological components as well as natural living components in an accumulative conclusion of global marine health.

Figure 1. Drivers, Activities, Pressures, State changes, Impacts on human Welfare, and management Responses as Measures [DAPSI(W)R(M)] scoping framework (Wolanski and Elliott, 2015).

Ecologists refer to resilience using the words “recovery,” and “resistance”, something that reflects “the degree to which a system can adapt to new conditions.” (Bernhardt and Leslie, 2013). There are things to consider when incorporating resilience into mechanisms for management tools to use on the marine ecosystem, such as influential actions that promote resilience and allow documentation of effectiveness. To further elaborate, there is a categorization of organismal resilience, population resilience, and ecosystem resilience. Organismal resilience involves maintaining homeostasis using physiological and behavioral strategies. Population resilience is the ability to recover from population loss and gain a resistance against the same cause of loss. Characteristics included are population size, age at reproductive maturity, density dependence of growth, genetic diversity, and gene flow from other habitats. Ecosystem resilience depends on rates of population, community recovery, and organismal traits that dampen sensitivity to stressors. Gathering data to understand these mechanisms is called empirical evidence; information gained by the senses and through observation and documentation of patterns and behaviors through experimentation. Gathering this evidence with mechanisms of resilience is important for scientists because then they can identify which species and processes of marine ecosystems are likely to be the most resilient against global change. When assessing marine health, it appears highly beneficial to include a measure of resilience to understand what can withstand which stressors in preparation for impact on human environmental activities. 

An example of a use of the resilience approach is in fisheries management. Within MPAs (marine protected areas), regulations can influence the resilience of a fish population. Specifically, there is a direct relationship in increasing stock sizes that also increases resistance to global change because of the increase in the stock’s genetic and functional diversity (Hilborn et al., 2003). Another suggestion is “a lottery-style adaptation on standing genetic variation [that] may serve as a resilience mechanism.” (Pespeni et al., 2013) Meaning, a random choice within a diverse set of species of what fish to capture. It doesn’t stop at genetic variation, fishery managers can also adjust the size of the fish to regulate fishing pressure. In this case, recovery of the marine system would be size-dependent and the fishery resilience is resistant at an organismal or population level. Understanding what particular resilience mechanisms exist, there is a “better understanding of spatiotemporal variability in a population’s vulnerability to both environmental stressors and predation within the fishery is likely to be useful for managers controlling fishery timing and location.” (Kroeker et al., 2019). As it has been said, the integrated components in this approach can capture a current state of a marine ecosystem and predict its reaction.

There are downsides to these integrated health assessment tools and approaches considering the complexity of the calculations and empirical evidence. This decreases the amount of confidence in decisions made because of potential economic consequences. For mechanisms of resilience, what is needed is a continuation of expansive long-term monitoring. The approach uses models to integrate environmental change, resilience mechanisms, and management actions across space and time to consider effects of all “adaptive management strategies”. Likewise with the economic approach, they both aim to incorporate social science and interdisciplinary analyses in “understanding potential effectiveness of these and new strategies for climate adaptation.” (McClenachan et al., 2019) Within all this is uncertainty that needs to be calculated, such as tracking the number of observations needed to reach a certain level of accuracy and precision (Carstensen, 2007). Quantifying the uncertainty in indicator values (values in the assessment that point towards conflict or change), affects the overall integrated assessment. (Borja et. al, 2016) An abundance of uncertainty will have decision-makers withdraw from adopting any regulative measure of human activities, especially with factors of high cost and unpredictable outcome. 

If the economic approach and its methods alongside mechanisms of resilience are gradually applied throughout the world, there will be an intake of valuable information and understanding. There needs to be transparency in decisions, a scientific defense behind conclusions, repeatability, and communication especially for legal credibility. Eventually, the results captured can be compared and bring marine regions together, decreasing the amount of time because of integrated work and global insight will be obtained to combat marine issues.

MLA Works Cited

Borja, et al. “Overview of Integrative Assessment of Marine Systems: The Ecosystem Approach in Practice.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 15 Feb. 2016, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2016.00020/full.

“Introduction.” Planning for Change: Assessing the Potential Role of Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries Management Approaches for Resilience Management in a Changing Ocean | Oceanography, tos.org/oceanography/article/planning-for-change-assessing-the-potential-role-of-marine-protected-areas.