A triage framework for managing novel, hybrid, and designed marine ecosystems

Abstract

The novel ecosystem (NE) concept has been discussed in terrestrial restoration ecology over the last 15 years but has not yet found much traction in the marine context. Against a background of unprecedented environmental change, managers of natural marine resources have portfolios full of altered systems for which restoration to a previous historical baseline may be impractical for ecological, social, or financial reasons. In these cases, the NE concept is useful for weighing options and emphasizes the risk of doing nothing by forcing questions regarding the value of novelty and how it can best be managed in the marine realm. Here, we explore how the concept fits marine ecosystems. We propose a scheme regarding how the NE concept could be used as a triage framework for use in marine environments within the context of a decision framework that explicitly considers changed ecosystems and whether restoration is the best or only option. We propose a conceptual diagram to show where marine NEs fit in the continuum of unaltered to shifted marine ecosystems. Overall, we suggest that the NE concept is of interest to marine ecologists and resource managers because it introduces a new vocabulary for considering marine systems that have been changed through human actions but have not shifted to an alternate stable state. Although it remains to be seen whether the concept of marine NEs leads to better conservation and restoration decisions, we posit that the concept may help inform management decisions in an era of unprecedented global marine change.

Oceanography and Marine Biology

“…Thus, there are reasons, including a precautionary principle, to categorise these ecosystems as hybrid rather than novel. In this regard, we disagree with Schläppy & Hobbs (2019), who argue that the lack of historical baselines to be pursued by restoration plans marks, by default, an ecosystem as novel. Of course, this does not negate the possibility for these systems to become novel (i.e.…”

“…An initial scan of the Web of Science (WoS) database in December 2018 returned just a handful of papers on the marine environment that have delved into this concept (Box 1). As pointed out by Schläppy & Hobbs (2019), this suggests that, after more than one decade, this question remains largely unaddressed. Of course, this does not reflect a smaller effort towards the assessment and management of human perturbations in the marine realm but rather a perceived reduced relevance of the novel ecosystem concept in marine environments or its limited dissemination and application amongst the global marine ecology community.…”

Novel resources: opportunities for and risks to species conservation

“…The broader ecological consequences of novel resource use by species are still largely unknown. Frameworks for addressing novelty in a management context are evolving (Hobbs et al 2014(Hobbs et al , 2018Schlappy and Hobbs 2019), as is the need to consider novel resources as a potentially important element of threatened species habitat. Given the species-specific nature of novel resources, it is challenging to predict how taxa will use and adapt to them, and whether their responses will be positive, negative, or neutral at the individual, species, or community level.…”

The policy consequences of defining rewilding

“…van Meerbeek et al 2019 ; Pedersen et al 2020 ), but how rewilding will be able to complement existing tools will depend on what goals it ultimately pursues. For instance, when taking a view that humans and wild nature can co-exist in a shared space, rewilding could be a useful approach to maintaining biodiversity in places where the legacy of human actions or ongoing global change makes restoration difficult (Schläppy and Hobbs 2019 ). Similarly, if rewilding embraces ecosystem change and transitions to novel systems, it is unlikely to be an appropriate conservation strategy in sites that have key populations of threatened species, or remnant threatened habitats, where active conservation management is preferable.…”