Mapping global human dependence on marine ecosystems

Abstract

Many human populations are dependent on marine ecosystems for a range of benefits, but we understand little about where and to what degree people rely on these ecosystem services. We created a new conceptual model to map the degree of human dependence on marine ecosystems based on the magnitude of the benefit, susceptibility of people to a loss of that benefit, and the availability of alternatives. We focused on mapping nutritional, economic, and coastal protection dependence, but our model is repeatable, scalable, applicable to other ecosystems, and designed to incorporate additional services and data. Here we show that dependence was highest for Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations and several West African countries. More than 775 million people live in areas with relatively high dependence scores. By identifying where and how people are dependent on marine ecosystems, our framework can be used to design more effective large‐scale management and policy interventions.

Using Re-scaled Resilience Screening Index Results and Location Quotients for Socio-Ecological Characterizations in U.S. Coastal Regions

“…For example, our data-driven typological approach would be useful in conjunction with Sempier et al (2010) Coastal Community Resilience Index, an internal self-assessment tool, developed to help communities address resilience issues and identify how to allocate resources to prepare and recover from disasters. Although the county-level of assessment CRSI provides is at a smaller scale than many other assessments, e.g., island-nation, country, region (Arkema et al, 2013;Selig et al, 2018), some community level tools and decisions require more localized scales. Future work could explore down-scaling CRSI results to sub-county scales to inform these types of tools and decisions.…”

The role of urbanisation in affecting Mytilus galloprovincialis

“…Marine ecosystems provide food provision, natural shoreline protection against storms and floods, water quality maintenance, support of tourism and other cultural benefits, and maintenance of our societies [1,2]. Despite of their importance, marine ecosystems have been strongly modified, degraded or lost as consequence of anthropogenic activities [1].…”

Generic and specific facets of vulnerability for analysing trade‐offs and synergies in natural resource management

“…When stressors affect people indirectly via impacts on the chain linking ecosystems to human well‐being (Daw et al, ), sensitivity is primarily determined by the degree to which people rely upon this chain (Daw et al, ; Depietri, ; Thiault et al, ), or ecosystem services dependency. Dependency is multifaceted and, depending on the focus of the study, may include nutritional, economic, social, cultural, psychological domains , or a combination of those (Marshall et al, ; Selig et al, ). Where is the appropriate place to draw the line between Sensitivity that is generic or stressor‐specific?…”