How are the impacts of multiple anthropogenic drivers considered in marine ecosystem service research? A systematic literature review

Abstract

In recent decades, great research efforts have been made to understand how specific anthropogenic drivers impact coastal marine ecosystems and their services. Nevertheless, we still lack a synthesis of the existing knowledge on single and multiple anthropogenic drivers impacts to coastal marine systems, which is necessary to guide future work. The objective of this paper is to assess the current knowledge on the impacts of anthropogenic drivers and their interactions on coastal marine ecosystem services, with emphasis on abiotic drivers as dissolved nutrients (eutrophication or de‐eutrophication), temperature (warming), pH (acidification) and oxygen (hypoxia). We performed a systematic review of the literature consisting of 164 papers using the PRISMA method (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses). We only include English‐written papers, we exclude non‐English papers to avoid potential errors in representing or interpreting scientific information due to language limitations among the authors. The results show that coastal marine ecosystem service research has largely focused on single drivers, while multiple driver assessments are less common. Assessments partially integrate multiple driver complexity, but they do not consider (1) relations and feedbacks between drivers; 2() social processes dynamics; and (3) temporal and spatial scales. Synthesis and applications. We have reviewed the current scientific knowledge on how human drivers affect coastal marine ecosystem services. We found that understanding the combined effects of different drivers and considering various time and space scales is still a pending issue. Ignoring multiple drivers, their interactions and time and space scales limits our understanding of reality, and results in high levels of uncertainty. This affects policies and actions, as they rely on uncertain information. Thus, incomplete knowledge leads to poor management of coastal ecosystem services. To improve this, we propose research framework to better consider multiple drivers and time and space factors.

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