Journal article
Assessing risks to marine ecosystems with indicators, ecosystem models and experts
LM Bland, KE Watermeyer, DA Keith, E Nicholson, TJ Regan, LJ Shannon
Biological Conservation | ELSEVIER SCI LTD | Published : 2018
Abstract
Assessing risks to marine ecosystems is critical due to their biological and economic importance, and because many have recently undergone regime shifts due to overfishing and environmental change. Yet defining collapsed ecosystem states, selecting informative indicators and reconstructing long-term marine ecosystem changes remains challenging. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems constitutes the global standard for quantifying risks to ecosystems and we conducted the first Red List assessment of an offshore marine ecosystem, focusing on the southern Benguela in South Africa. We used an analogous but collapsed ecosystem – the northern Benguela – to help define collapse in the southern Benguela an..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The expert elicitation component of this project was approved by the University of Melbourne's Human Ethics Advisory Group (1648221.1). We thank Astrid Jarre for discussions and comments on an earlier draft and Beth Fulton, Kelly Ortega-Cisneros and the participants of the Benguela Current Symposium 2016 for helpful discussions on the southern Benguela. L.M.B. and E.N. were supported by a Veski Inspiring Women Fellowship. L.J.S. and K.E.W. were supported through the South African Research Chair Initiative, funded through the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) and administered by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). K.E.W. was also supported by an ARC Discovery Grant DP170100609.