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A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil

Brazil has one of the largest and fastest growing economies and one of the largest coastlines in the world, making human use and enjoyment of coastal and marine resources of fundamental importance to the country. Integrated assessments of ocean health are needed to understand the condition of a rang...

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Autores principales: Elfes, Cristiane T., Longo, Catherine, Halpern, Benjamin S., Hardy, Darren, Scarborough, Courtney, Best, Benjamin D., Pinheiro, Tiago, Dutra, Guilherme F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24695103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092589
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author Elfes, Cristiane T.
Longo, Catherine
Halpern, Benjamin S.
Hardy, Darren
Scarborough, Courtney
Best, Benjamin D.
Pinheiro, Tiago
Dutra, Guilherme F.
author_facet Elfes, Cristiane T.
Longo, Catherine
Halpern, Benjamin S.
Hardy, Darren
Scarborough, Courtney
Best, Benjamin D.
Pinheiro, Tiago
Dutra, Guilherme F.
author_sort Elfes, Cristiane T.
collection PubMed
description Brazil has one of the largest and fastest growing economies and one of the largest coastlines in the world, making human use and enjoyment of coastal and marine resources of fundamental importance to the country. Integrated assessments of ocean health are needed to understand the condition of a range of benefits that humans derive from marine systems and to evaluate where attention should be focused to improve the health of these systems. Here we describe the first such assessment for Brazil at both national and state levels. We applied the Ocean Health Index framework, which evaluates ten public goals for healthy oceans. Despite refinements of input data and model formulations, the national score of 60 (out of 100) was highly congruent with the previous global assessment for Brazil of 62. Variability in scores among coastal states was most striking for goals related to mariculture, protected areas, tourism, and clean waters. Extractive goals, including Food Provision, received low scores relative to habitat-related goals, such as Biodiversity. This study demonstrates the applicability of the Ocean Health Index at a regional scale, and its usefulness in highlighting existing data and knowledge gaps and identifying key policy and management recommendations. To improve Brazil's ocean health, this study suggests that future actions should focus on: enhancing fisheries management, expanding marine protected areas, and monitoring coastal habitats.
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spelling pubmed-39736402014-04-04 A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil Elfes, Cristiane T. Longo, Catherine Halpern, Benjamin S. Hardy, Darren Scarborough, Courtney Best, Benjamin D. Pinheiro, Tiago Dutra, Guilherme F. PLoS One Research Article Brazil has one of the largest and fastest growing economies and one of the largest coastlines in the world, making human use and enjoyment of coastal and marine resources of fundamental importance to the country. Integrated assessments of ocean health are needed to understand the condition of a range of benefits that humans derive from marine systems and to evaluate where attention should be focused to improve the health of these systems. Here we describe the first such assessment for Brazil at both national and state levels. We applied the Ocean Health Index framework, which evaluates ten public goals for healthy oceans. Despite refinements of input data and model formulations, the national score of 60 (out of 100) was highly congruent with the previous global assessment for Brazil of 62. Variability in scores among coastal states was most striking for goals related to mariculture, protected areas, tourism, and clean waters. Extractive goals, including Food Provision, received low scores relative to habitat-related goals, such as Biodiversity. This study demonstrates the applicability of the Ocean Health Index at a regional scale, and its usefulness in highlighting existing data and knowledge gaps and identifying key policy and management recommendations. To improve Brazil's ocean health, this study suggests that future actions should focus on: enhancing fisheries management, expanding marine protected areas, and monitoring coastal habitats. Public Library of Science 2014-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3973640/ /pubmed/24695103 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092589 Text en © 2014 Elfes et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Elfes, Cristiane T.
Longo, Catherine
Halpern, Benjamin S.
Hardy, Darren
Scarborough, Courtney
Best, Benjamin D.
Pinheiro, Tiago
Dutra, Guilherme F.
A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title_full A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title_fullStr A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title_full_unstemmed A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title_short A Regional-Scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil
title_sort regional-scale ocean health index for brazil
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24695103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092589
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