Marine Science Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.56
Abstract
Continental shelves and the waters overlying them support numerous industries as diverse as tourism and recreation, energy extraction, fisheries, transportation, and applications of marine bio-molecules (e.g., agribusiness, food processing, pharmaceuticals). Although these shelf ecosystems exhibit impacts of climate change and increased human use of resources (Halpern et al., 2012; IPCC, 2013, 2014; Melillo et al., 2014), there are currently no standardized metrics for assessing changes in ecological function in the coastal ocean. Here, we argue that it is possible to monitor vital signs of ecosystem function by focusing on the lowest levels of the ocean food web. Establishment of biodiversity, biomass, and primary productivity baselines and continuous evaluation of changes in biological resources in these economically and ecologically valuable regions requires an internationally coordinated monitoring effort that fully integrates natural, social, and economic sciences to jointly identify problems and design solutions. Such an ocean observing network is needed to protect the livelihoods of coastal communities in the context of the goals of the Future Earth program (Mooney et al., 2013) and of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (http://www.ipbes.net). The tools needed to initiate these assessments are available today.
Rights Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Oceanography, v. 27, no. 2, p. 18-23
Scholar Commons Citation
Muller-Karger, Frank; Kavanaugh, Maria; Montes, Enrique; Balch, William; and Breitbart, Mya, "A Framework for a Marine Biodiversity Observing Network Within Changing Continental Shelf Seascapes" (2014). Marine Science Faculty Publications. 722.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/msc_facpub/722
Comments
Complete List of Authors:
Frank E. Muller-Karger , Maria T. Kavanaugh, Enrique Montes , William M. Balch, Mya Breitbart, Francisco P. Chavez, Scott C. Doney , Elizabeth M. Johns, Ricardo M. Letelier, Michael W. Lomas, Heidi M. Sosik, and Angelicque E. White
Licensing Information (which differs from what is listed on the PDF):
This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.
For more information, please see the "Copyright and Usage" section of: https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.56