With globally accelerating rates of environmental disturbance, coastal marine ecosystems are increasingly prone to non-linear regime shifts that result in a loss of ecosystem function and services. A lack of early-detection methods, and an over reliance on limits-based approaches means that these tipping points manifest as surprises. Consequently, marine ecosystems are notoriously difficult to manage, and scientists, managers, and policy makers are paralyzed in a spiral of ecosystem degradation. This paralysis is caused by the inherent need to quantify the risk and uncertainty that surrounds every decision. While progress toward forecasting tipping points is ongoing and important, an interim approach is desperately needed to enable scientists to make recommendations that are credible and defensible in the face of deep uncertainty. We discuss how current tools for developing risk assessments and scenario planning, coupled with expert opinions, can be adapted to bridge gaps in quantitative data, enabling scientists and managers to prepare for many plausible futures. We argue that these tools are currently underutilized in a marine cumulative effects context but offer a way to inform decisions in the interim while predictive models and early warning signals remain imperfect. This approach will require redefining the way we think about managing for ecological surprise to include actions that not only limit drivers of tipping points but increase socio-ecological resilience to yield satisfactory outcomes under multiple possible futures that are inherently uncertain.
The supply of ecosystem services (ES) that benefit humanity are derived from multiple, interacting ecological functions and processes. Focusing on the ecological mechanisms that underpin ES delivery allows bundles of services to be identified, bridging a critical gap with management. Work in marine systems has not yet progressed to the identification of ES bundles, as a result of data scarcity and complications arising from system complexity and connectivity, as opposed to terrestrial systems where ES bundles have been more widely applied based on spatial clustering. To demonstrate the approach, identification of ES bundles provided by shellfish is used as a case-study. Shellfish provide a number of known ES that need to be strategically managed to ensure sustainable use. As a result of global degradations in shellfish beds ES have been lost, and restoration efforts emphasize the importance in regaining these services. A literature review, including 146 papers aimed specifically at linking shellfish to either ecosystem functions or ES, was conducted to establish key linkages between processes, functions and services. Based on co-occurrence of services and shared linkages, four bundles of services are identified, including Marine resources, Coastal health and quality, Habitat modification, and Biological structuring. Our study emphasizes the underpinning ecological mechanisms and the importance of interactions between services, expressed in the formation of bundles by mutual drivers and processes, as well as between services in different bundles, as either synergies or trade-offs. The approach enables the translation of ecological knowledge and creates generality to inform policy making and management, thereby providing a format useful for ecologists, managers and other stakeholders.
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