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Tett P, Gowen RJ, Painting SJ, Elliott M, Forster R, Mills DK, Bresnan E, Capuzzo E, Fernandes TF, Foden J, Geider RJ, Gilpin LC, Huxham M, McQuatters-Gollop AL, Malcolm SJ, Saux-Picart S, Platt T, Racault MF, Sathyendranath S, van der Molen J, Wilkinson M
Framework for understanding marine ecosystem health
Tett and co-authors review the disputed concept of ecosystem health and conclude that it can be a useful metaphor, a way to aggregate condition over species and communities, and a holistic assessment that allows investigation of emergent properties such as resilience. Employing the concept can aid the 'ecosystem approach' to the use of marine resources. However, there are no direct methods for measuring marine ecosystem health. The graphic illustrates a proposal to monitor changes in ecosystem state by tracking changes in state space relative to an arbitrary reference condition. Variability, about the long-term trend in the scalar distance travelled from this condition, might be used as a proxy for inverse resilience.
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