Erik Olsen

Integration at the Round Table: Marine Spatial Planning in Multi-Stakeholder Settings

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is often considered as a pragmatic approach to implement an ecosystem based management in order to manage marine space in a sustainable way. This requires the involvement of multiple actors and stakeholders at various governmental and societal levels. Several factors affect how well the integrated management of marine waters will be achieved, such as different governance settings (division of power between central and local governments), economic activities (and related priorities), external drivers, spatial scales, incentives and objectives, varying approaches to legislation and political will. We compared MSP in Belgium, Norway and the US to illustrate how the integration of stakeholders and governmental levels differs among these countries along the factors mentioned above. Horizontal integration (between sectors) is successful in all three countries, achieved through the use of neutral ‘round-table’ meeting places for all actors. Vertical integration between government levels varies, with Belgium and Norway having achieved full integration while the US lacks integration of the legislature due to sharp disagreements among stakeholders and unsuccessful partisan leadership. Success factors include political will and leadership, process transparency and stakeholder participation, and should be considered in all MSP development processes.

Ecosystem Model Skill Assessment. Yes We Can

Need to Assess the Skill of Ecosystem Models Accelerated changes to global ecosystems call for holistic and integrated analyses of past, present and future states under various pressures to adequately understand current and projected future system states. Ecosystem models can inform management of human activities in a complex and changing environment, but are these models reliable? Ensuring that models are reliable for addressing management questions requires evaluating their skill in representing real-world processes and dynamics. Skill has been evaluated for just a limited set of some biophysical models. A range of skill assessment methods have been reviewed but skill assessment of full marine ecosystem models has not yet been attempted. Northeast US Atlantis Marine Ecosystem Model We assessed the skill of the Northeast U.S. (NEUS) Atlantis marine ecosystem model by comparing 10-year model forecasts with observed data. Model forecast performance was compared to that obtained from a 40-year hindcast. Multiple metrics (average absolute error, root mean squared error, modeling efficiency, and Spearman rank correlation), and a suite of time-series (species biomass, fisheries landings, and ecosystem indicators) were used to adequately measure model skill. Overall, the NEUS model performed above average and thus better than expected for the key species that had been the focus of the model tuning. Model forecast skill was comparable to the hindcast skill, showing that model performance does not degenerate in a 10-year forecast mode, an important characteristic for an end-to-end ecosystem model to be useful for strategic management purposes. Skill Assessment Is Both Possible and Advisable We identify best-practice approaches for end-to-end ecosystem model skill assessment that would improve both operational use of other ecosystem models and future model development. We show that it is possible to not only assess the skill of a complicated marine ecosystem model, but that it is necessary do so to instill confidence in model results and encourage their use for strategic management. Our methods are applicable to any type of predictive model, and should be considered for use in fields outside ecology (e.g. economics, climate change, and risk assessment).

An ecosystem‐based approach to marine risk assessment

Abstract Risk assessments quantify the probability of undesirable events along with their consequences. They are used to prioritize management interventions and assess tradeoffs, serving as an essential component of ecosystem‐based management (). A central objective of most risk assessments for conservation and management is to characterize uncertainty and impacts associated with one or more pressures of interest. Risk assessments have been used in marine resource management to help evaluate the risk of environmental, ecological, and anthropogenic pressures on species or habitats including for data‐poor fisheries management (e.g., toxicity, probability of extinction, habitat alteration impacts). Traditionally, marine risk assessments focused on singular pressure‐response relationships, but recent advancements have included use of risk assessments in an context, providing a method for evaluating the cumulative impacts of multiple pressures on multiple ecosystem components. Here, we describe a conceptual framework for ecosystem risk assessment (), highlighting its role in operationalizing , with specific attention to ocean management considerations. This framework builds on the ecotoxicological and conservation literature on risk assessment and includes recent advances that focus on risks posed by fishing to marine ecosystems. We review how examples of s from the United States fit into this framework, explore the variety of analytical approaches that have been used to conduct s, and assess the challenges and data gaps that remain. This review discusses future prospects for s as decision‐support tools, their expanded role in integrated ecosystem assessments, and the development of next‐generation risk assessments for coupled natural–human systems.

Integrated Ocean Management as a Strategy to Meet Rapid Climate Change: The Norwegian Case

The prospects of rapid climate change and the potential existence of tipping points in marine ecosystems where nonlinear change may result from them being overstepped, raises the question of strategies for coping with ecosystem change. There is broad agreement that the combined forces of climate change, pollution and increasing economic activities necessitates more comprehensive approaches to oceans management, centering on the concept of ecosystem-based oceans management. This article addresses the Norwegian experience in introducing integrated, ecosystem-based oceans management, emphasizing how climate change, seen as a major long-term driver of change in ecosystems, is addressed in management plans. Understanding the direct effects of climate variability and change on ecosystems and indirect effects on human activities is essential for adaptive planning to be useful in the long-term management of the marine environment.

Lessons on Marine Protected Area Management in Northern Boreal Regions from the United States and Norway

In comparison to tropical reef systems, relatively few marine protected areas (MPA’s) exist in temperate or subarctic systems (e.g., North Pacifi c and North Atlantic) where species diversity is lower, abundance of individual species is often higher, and many fi sh species exhibit large amounts of movement during one or more of their life stages, especially as adults. A review of MPA’s in three northern areas—the Northwest Atlantic, Northeast Atlantic, and the Northeast Pacifi c—indicates that MPA’s can be useful management tools towards fi sheries management and habitat conservation. However, achieving fi shery goals, Introduction Marine protected areas (MPA’s) can be considered a tool for ecosystembased marine spatial planning (Katsanevakis et al., 2011; Stelzenmüller et al., 2013) and have been established to meet the goals of biodiversity conservation, sustainable management of marine resources, and marine heritage preservation (Fernandez and Castilla, 2005; Field et al., 2006; Worm et al., 2006; Greenville and Macaulay, 2007; Gleason et al., 2010; Grafton et al., 2011; Hansen et al., 2011; Rice et al., 2012). MPA’s can also serve to protect habitats from destructive fi shing practices (e.g., protection against fi shing impacts on coral reefs off Norway), extraction activities, energy production, and petroleum development. The use of MPA’s has necessitated the creation of organizations to monitor and give advice on their designation and use, both within nations (i.e., the National Marine Protected Area Center (NMPAC), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States), and internationally (i.e., the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations) (Murawski et al., 2000). For the purposes of this paper, we use the MPA defi nition formulated in the United States: “. . . area of the marine environment that has been reserved . . . to provide lasting protection for part or all of the natural and cultural resources therein.” 1 From the perspective of many consumptive users of the ecosystem (e.g., 1 http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov. such as sustainable use of the fi sheries resources, will depend on population abundance (relative to unfi shed conditions) and fi sh behavior and movement. For example, depleted populations of stationary species such as Atlantic sea scallops, Placopecten magellanicus, in the Northeast Atlantic and European lobster, Homarus grammarus, in the North Sea have responded positively to small MPA’s, whereas migratory offshore Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, and Pacifi c cod, Gadus microcephalus, apparently do not appear to benefi t from closed areas because of movement into fi shed areas. Effi cient habitat conservation requires detailed fi shermen, shipping industry, oil industry), MPA’s are often seen as a means to exclude users from accessing valuable areas (Katsanevakis et al., 2011; Thorpe et al., 2011; Abbott and Haynie, 2012; Buhl-Mortensen et al., 2017). Therefore, the decisions regarding area closures are often highly controversial (Thorpe et al., 2011; Rice et al., 2012; Fenner, 2016), and motivate examination of the effectiveness of MPA’s relative to other management tools (i.e., reduction in catch levels or fi shing effort for sustainably managing fi sheries yield). Within the scientifi c community, there is ongoing research on the effectiveness of MPA’s as management tools for fi sh species and ecosystems (Trexler and Travis, 2000; Roberts et al., 2005; Sanchirico et al., 2006; Worm et al., 2006; Lester et al., 2009; Sorensen and Thomsen, 2009; Thorpe et al., 2011). Establishment of MPA’s may not consider the potential interactions with other spatial closures, physical and biological processes such as ocean currents and phenology, and diverse human uses and responses to the MPA (Katsanevakis et al., 2011). habitat mapping on relevant spatial scales. In northern boreal systems with large remote areas, this information is diffi cult and expensive to access. An alternative strategy of closing and protecting unexploited areas has worked well for the Aleutian Island coral closure area in Alaska. MPA’s can be effective fi sheries management tools when the species to be protected have been depleted and show a small to moderate level of movement, and reproductive success is ensured. MPA’s can be effective at preserving habitat when the design is based on scientifi c information and takes into account the impact on the user groups.