Past Anomalies as a Diagnostic Tool for Evaluating Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbance Events

In the search for the best ecological and economic indicators of ecosystem change, a unifying solution for joining data from disparate fields appears as a general rule: Organize data into space/time/topic hierarchies that permit convergence of data resulting from shared and appropriate scaling. The scale of the data selects for compatible methodologies, leading to data integration and the discovery of new relationships. Information technology approaches include bibliographic keyword searches, data-mining, data-modeling and geographic information system design. The approach was used within the “HEED” (Health Ecological and Economic Dimensions) study, which reconstructed historic marine disturbance events within the Northwestern Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The object of the study was to retrospectively derive co-occurring Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbances (MMEDs). Disturbances include indices of morbidity, mortality and disease events affecting humans, marine invertebrates, flora, and wildlife populations. Correlations between space/time occurrence, event coincidence, climate and oceanographic forcing are used to better define multiple marine ecological disturbance types. Systematic derivation of these types is part of diagnostic approach that can assist or guide marine ecological risk assessment.     

Assessment of Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbances: Applying the North American Prototype to the Baltic Sea Ecosystem

Multiple marine ecological disturbances are ecosystem health indicators. An approach is described for systematically reconstructing spatial and temporal marine disturbance regimes related to human morbidity, wildlife mortality, disease events and harmful algal blooms. The approach is based upon recovery of meta-data from a survey of published literature and consolidation of geographic information layers from pre-existing sources. The examples provided are from the HEED (Health Ecological and Economic Dimensions) project conducted in the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Eight general disturbance indicator categories from HEED are suggested for assessing the health of the Baltic Sea ecosystem. These disturbance indicators represent 147 distinct impact types that may be used to examine relationships among impact causes, effects and costs from disturbances observed for near coastal and open waters. The HEED prototype is compatible with the objectives of the health module of the Baltic Sea's Large Marine Ecosystem initiative and consistent with implementation of the Baltic Sea Agenda 21 program. The general disturbance research methodology may be applied to the Baltic Sea or any other multijurisdiction marine region and these methods are not restricted to marine systems