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Evaluation of New Techniques for Monitoring and Assessing the Health of Large Marine Ecosystems

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Evaluating and Monitoring the Health of Large-Scale Ecosystems

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASII,volume 28))

Abstract

Until recently to effectively monitor the marine biota and associated environmental variables both temporally and spatially throughout ocean basins or Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) (Sherman 1993) was a prohibitively costly and almost an impossible logistical task. Biological processes within a pelagic ecosystem range from seconds to years with a spatial domain of centimetres to tens or even hundreds of kilometres. Developments in the last 15 years in marine instrumentation and remotely sensed measurements of water colour from space together with increased data processing and storage capabilities have allowed us for the first time to approach this task with any realism. The observation made by Aebischer et al. (1990) that changes in one section of the marine community, over several decades, could be representative of the ’whole ecosystem’ was significant. Their data on long term trends (33 years, 1955–1987) across four marine trophic levels in the north west North Sea of phytoplankton, zooplankton, herring, kittiwake breeding and one of climatic data, westerly weather, all showed a similar parallel pattern. The data series were examined by means of spectral and cross spectral analysis and showed remarkable parallelism. The authors were cautious about the causal mechanisms but they stated that “the results posed a major challenge to modellers to reproduce such patterns which could be used in interpreting global and climate change.” It was probably the first supportive evidence that it was not necessary to monitor ’every’ variable within the system and that detailed information of a selection of ’key’ variables, over time, could indicate the general patterns of the change within a Large Marine Ecosystem.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, West Hoe Plymouth Devon, PL1 3DH, England

    Robert Williams

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  1. Robert Williams
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Blackwood Hall, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

    David J. Rapport

  2. Soil and Sediment Quality Section, Environment Canada, Hull, Quebec, K1A 0H3, Canada

    Connie L. Gaudet (Ecosystem Conservation Directorate) (Ecosystem Conservation Directorate)

  3. Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, P. O. Box 601, Sheffield, S10 2UQ, UK

    Peter Calow

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Williams, R. (1995). Evaluation of New Techniques for Monitoring and Assessing the Health of Large Marine Ecosystems. In: Rapport, D.J., Gaudet, C.L., Calow, P. (eds) Evaluating and Monitoring the Health of Large-Scale Ecosystems. NATO ASI Series, vol 28. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79464-3_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79464-3_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-79466-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-79464-3

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