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Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks

Marine policy is increasingly calling for maintaining or restoring healthy oceans while human activities continue to intensify. Thus, successful prioritization and management of competing objectives requires a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the ocean. Unfortunately, assessment fram...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart, Pacheco, Erich J., Best, Benjamin D., Scarborough, Courtney, Longo, Catherine, Katona, Steven K., Halpern, Benjamin S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4690351/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26713251
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1503
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author Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart
Pacheco, Erich J.
Best, Benjamin D.
Scarborough, Courtney
Longo, Catherine
Katona, Steven K.
Halpern, Benjamin S.
author_facet Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart
Pacheco, Erich J.
Best, Benjamin D.
Scarborough, Courtney
Longo, Catherine
Katona, Steven K.
Halpern, Benjamin S.
author_sort Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart
collection PubMed
description Marine policy is increasingly calling for maintaining or restoring healthy oceans while human activities continue to intensify. Thus, successful prioritization and management of competing objectives requires a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the ocean. Unfortunately, assessment frameworks to define and quantify current ocean state are often site-specific, limited to a few ocean components, and difficult to reproduce in different geographies or even through time, limiting spatial or temporal comparisons as well as the potential for shared learning. Ideally, frameworks should be tailorable to accommodate use in disparate locations and contexts, removing the need to develop frameworks de novo and allowing efforts to focus on the assessments themselves to advise action. Here, we present some of our experiences using the Ocean Health Index (OHI) framework, a tailorable and repeatable approach that measures health of coupled human-ocean ecosystems in different contexts by accommodating differences in local environmental characteristics, cultural priorities, and information availability and quality. Since its development in 2012, eleven assessments using the OHI framework have been completed at global, national, and regional scales, four of which have been led by independent academic or government groups. We have found the following to be best practices for conducting assessments: Incorporate key characteristics and priorities into the assessment framework design before gathering information; Strategically define spatial boundaries to balance information availability and decision-making scales; Maintain the key characteristics and priorities of the assessment framework regardless of information limitations; and Document and share the assessment process, methods, and tools. These best practices are relevant to most ecosystem assessment processes, but also provide tangible guidance for assessments using the OHI framework. These recommendations also promote transparency around which decisions were made and why, reproducibility through access to detailed methods and computational code, repeatability via the ability to modify methods and computational code, and ease of communication to wide audiences, all of which are critical for any robust assessment process.
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spelling pubmed-46903512015-12-28 Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart Pacheco, Erich J. Best, Benjamin D. Scarborough, Courtney Longo, Catherine Katona, Steven K. Halpern, Benjamin S. PeerJ Environmental Sciences Marine policy is increasingly calling for maintaining or restoring healthy oceans while human activities continue to intensify. Thus, successful prioritization and management of competing objectives requires a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the ocean. Unfortunately, assessment frameworks to define and quantify current ocean state are often site-specific, limited to a few ocean components, and difficult to reproduce in different geographies or even through time, limiting spatial or temporal comparisons as well as the potential for shared learning. Ideally, frameworks should be tailorable to accommodate use in disparate locations and contexts, removing the need to develop frameworks de novo and allowing efforts to focus on the assessments themselves to advise action. Here, we present some of our experiences using the Ocean Health Index (OHI) framework, a tailorable and repeatable approach that measures health of coupled human-ocean ecosystems in different contexts by accommodating differences in local environmental characteristics, cultural priorities, and information availability and quality. Since its development in 2012, eleven assessments using the OHI framework have been completed at global, national, and regional scales, four of which have been led by independent academic or government groups. We have found the following to be best practices for conducting assessments: Incorporate key characteristics and priorities into the assessment framework design before gathering information; Strategically define spatial boundaries to balance information availability and decision-making scales; Maintain the key characteristics and priorities of the assessment framework regardless of information limitations; and Document and share the assessment process, methods, and tools. These best practices are relevant to most ecosystem assessment processes, but also provide tangible guidance for assessments using the OHI framework. These recommendations also promote transparency around which decisions were made and why, reproducibility through access to detailed methods and computational code, repeatability via the ability to modify methods and computational code, and ease of communication to wide audiences, all of which are critical for any robust assessment process. PeerJ Inc. 2015-12-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4690351/ /pubmed/26713251 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1503 Text en © 2015 Lowndes 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Environmental Sciences
Lowndes, Julia S. Stewart
Pacheco, Erich J.
Best, Benjamin D.
Scarborough, Courtney
Longo, Catherine
Katona, Steven K.
Halpern, Benjamin S.
Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title_full Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title_fullStr Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title_full_unstemmed Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title_short Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
title_sort best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks
topic Environmental Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4690351/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26713251
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1503
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