There is a pressing need to integrate biophysical and human dimensions science to better inform holistic ecosystem management supporting the transition from single species or single-sector management to multi-sector ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management should focus upon ecosystem services, since they reflect societal goals, values, desires, and benefits. The inclusion of ecosystem services into holistic management strategies improves management by better capturing the diversity of positive and negative human-natural interactions and making explicit the benefits to society. To facilitate this inclusion, we propose a conceptual model that merges the broadly applied Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response (DPSIR) conceptual model with ecosystem services yielding a Driver, Pressure, State, Ecosystem service, and Response (EBM-DPSER) conceptual model. The impact module in traditional DPSIR models focuses attention upon negative anthropomorphic impacts on the ecosystem; by replacing impacts with ecosystem services the EBM-DPSER model incorporates not only negative, but also positive changes in the ecosystem. Responses occur as a result of changes in ecosystem services and include inter alia management actions directed at proactively altering human population or individual behavior and infrastructure to meet societal goals. The EBM-DPSER conceptual model was applied to the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas marine ecosystem as a case study to illustrate how it can inform management decisions. This case study captures our system-level understanding and results in a more holistic representation of ecosystem and human society interactions, thus improving our ability to identify trade-offs. The EBM-DPSER model should be a useful operational tool for implementing EBM, in that it fully integrates our knowledge of all ecosystem components while focusing management attention upon those aspects of the ecosystem most important to human society and does so within a framework already familiar to resource managers.

Abstract. An annual water budget for Florida Bay, the large, seasonally hypersaline estuary in the Everglades National Park, was constructed using physically based models and long-term (31 years) data on salinity, hydrology, and climate. Effects of seasonal and interannual variations of the net freshwater supply (runoff plus rainfall minus evaporation) on salinity variation within the bay were also examined. Particular attention was paid to the effects of runoff, which are the focus of ambitious plans to restore and conserve the Florida Bay ecosystem. From 1965 to 1995 the annual runoff from the Everglades into the bay was less than one tenth of the annual direct rainfall onto the bay, while estimated annual evaporation slightly exceeded annual rainfall. The average net freshwater supply to the bay over a year was thus approximately zero, and interannual variations in salinity appeared to be affected primarily by interannual fluctuations in rainfall. At the annual scale, runoff apparently had little effect on the bay as a whole during this period. On a seasonal basis, variations in rainfall, evaporation, and runoff were not in phase, and the net freshwater supply to the bay varied between positive and negative values, contributing to a strong seasonal pattern in salinity, especially in regions of the bay relatively isolated from exchanges with the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Changes in runoff could have a greater effect on salinity in the bay if the seasonal patterns of rainfall and evaporation and the timing of the runoff are considered. One model was also used to simulate spatial and temporal patterns of salinity responses expected to result from changes in net freshwater supply. Simulations in which runoff was increased by a factor of 2 (but with no change in spatial pattern) indicated that increased runoff will lower salinity values in eastern Florida Bay, increase the variability of salinity in the South Region, but have little effect on salinity in the Central and West Regions.

Rates of gas emissions and solute fluxes from salt marsh sediments are influenced by sediment hydrology. A comprehensive water balance study in a New England salt marsh reveals that evapotranspiration and infiltration during tidal inundation and precipitation are the dominant hydrological processes in the sediment on a marsh‐wide scale. Water loss by drainage through the sediment into tidal creeks is effectively limited to within 10 m to 15 m of the creek bank; however, drainage is responsible for 40% of the water loss within 10 m of the creek during nonflooding, neap tide periods. The rate and extent of advective transport by pore water drainage is controlled by the topography of the marsh surface. Tidal fluctuations in creek level drive larger, oscillating water fluxes across the creek bank, which results in a dispersive transport of the solutes in the sediment, but these fluxes are attenuated in the first meter. Convexities in the marsh surface, for example, the crests of the creek banks, are the location of maximum water loss by drainage and probably the highest degree of desaturation and aeration, which can, in turn, increase gas emissions locally. The spring‐neap tide cycle modulates wetting and drying of the sediment and, by inference, gas emissions in the interior of the marsh. The limited extent of solute transport by drainage implies that an as yet undescribed mechanism is responsible for controlling the concentration of conservative solutes in salt marshes.

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Models of depth‐averaged hydraulic head are used with data from a water balance study in a New England salt marsh to describe horizontal pore water water fluxes near a creek bank. Three hydrologically distinct regions are identified in the sediment. In the marsh studied, semidiurnal tides may drive an oscillating horizontal flux in the narrow region within about 2.5 m of the creek bank. Farther than 15 m from the creek there is essentially no horizontal water movement. In the region between 2.5 and 15 m, drainage to the creek is driven by alternating periods of surface flooding and nonflooding due to the spring neap variation in tidal amplitudes. There is little or no input of fresh groundwater to the marsh sediment at this site. The spatial extent of the drained region depends on the duration of the nonflooded period, the morphology of the sediment surface, and the ratio of hydraulic conductivity to specific storage of the sediment.