Abstract
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as the generally agreed strategy for managing ecosystems, with humans as integral parts of the managed system. Human activities have substantial effects on marine ecosystems, through overfishing, eutrophication, toxic pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. It is important to advance the scientific knowledge of the cumulative, integrative, and interacting effects of these diverse activities, to support effective implementation of EBM. Based on contributions to this special issue of AMBIO, we synthesize the scientific findings into four components: pollution and legal frameworks, ecosystem processes, scale-dependent effects, and innovative tools and methods. We conclude with challenges for the future, and identify the next steps needed for successful implementation of EBM in general and specifically for the Baltic Sea.
Highlights
Human activities have both directly and indirectly altered ecosystem dynamics worldwide, with significant and often negative environmental and economic consequences (Jackson et al 2001; Halpern et al 2008a; Conversi et al 2014).An adaptive governance or management strategy is required to manage ecosystems effectively (Folke et al 2005)
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as the dominant strategy for managing ecosystems, with humans seen as parts of the system to be managed (Misund and Skjoldal 2005; Ruckelshaus et al 2008; McLeod and Leslie 2009; Tallis et al 2010; Berkes 2012)
It is important to advance the scientific knowledge of the cumulative and interacting effects of these diverse activities, in order to support effective implementation of EBM. This special issue of AMBIO is a contribution to this process and provides examples of scientific findings intended to improve our understanding of and capacity to manage the ecosystem of Baltic Sea
Summary
Human activities have both directly and indirectly altered ecosystem dynamics worldwide, with significant and often negative environmental and economic consequences (Jackson et al 2001; Halpern et al 2008a; Conversi et al 2014). It is important to advance the scientific knowledge of the cumulative and interacting effects of these diverse activities, in order to support effective implementation of EBM This special issue of AMBIO is a contribution to this process and provides examples of scientific findings intended to improve our understanding of and capacity to manage the ecosystem of Baltic Sea. This special issue of AMBIO is a contribution to this process and provides examples of scientific findings intended to improve our understanding of and capacity to manage the ecosystem of Baltic Sea This synthesis paper shows how the findings presented in other articles in this special issue contribute to EBM of the Baltic Sea environment. All citations that refer to papers of this special AMBIO issue are marked in bold
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