Moving Beyond Silos in Cumulative Effects Assessment

Emma E Hodgson,Benjamin S Halpern,Timothy E Essington

doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00211

Abstract

Many of the world’s ecosystems are experiencing a suite of changes from anthropogenic activities; the multiple stressors from those activities result in cumulative impacts. Understanding how these activities translate into ecological consequences is exceedingly challenging because of the inherent complexity within natural systems and the variability in how stressors act and species respond. While there have been substantial advancements within the field of cumulative effects assessment to address these issues and improve our understanding of the consequences of our actions, many challenges in remain. Here, we detail advances and remaining challenges, and propose five priorities for addressing these challenges in the near future. In particular, we suggest prioritizing risk-based approaches that account for uncertainty in our understanding, and establishing underlying theory for when we expect particular impacts to occur. We also propose the need for a defined subdiscipline focused on cumulative effects, to help reduce the silos of research that are often disconnected, and to work towards a common set of definitions, methods and consistent use of open-data.

Highlights

The world’s ecosystems are experiencing a suite of changes from exposure to multiple human disturbances
It is exceedingly challenging to understand the cumulative consequences of multiple stressors because the stressors themselves vary across space and time (Cocklin et al, 1992a), and species’ responses are diverse and not clearly predictable (Crain et al, 2008; Przeslawski et al, 2014)
Responses can be non-linear (Hunsicker et al, 2016) and can cause cascading effects within ecosystems (Kaplan et al, 2010; Griffith et al, 2012). Though these complicating factors present a profound challenge, there have been substantial developments within the field of cumulative effects assessment to address some of these complexities (Shopley and Fuggle, 1984; Cocklin et al, 1992b; Smit and Spaling, 1995; Duinker et al, 2012; Boyd et al, 2018; Hodgson and Halpern, 2018)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The world’s ecosystems are experiencing a suite of changes from exposure to multiple human disturbances. Missing data Many species and systems remain unstudied or poorly studied Hidden data Data from consulting organizations, government scientists and academic researchers are often not publicly available, remaining hidden in resource management agency reports, environmental consultant files, or unpublished or unshared data from scientific publications Inconsistency in definitions Those conducting cumulative effects assessments often use different definitions for the components of the system (Foley et al, 2017) or how they define a particular type of impact (Côté et al, 2016). Though many cumulative effects research test the outcomes from sets of stressors, there is a lack of theoretical underpinnings supporting predictive capacity of when particular impacts might be expected to occur Identifying these characteristics for species, systems and stressors would be useful for circumstances where we have limited data (Côté et al, 2016). This can in part be addressed through collaborations between experts across silos (e.g., Punt et al, 2015)

CONCLUSIONS

ETHICS STATEMENT