Science Advisory Report 2016/053

Science Advice on Regional Productivity Benchmarks

Summary

• In general, the development of regional community and population productivity benchmarks was considered appropriate and feasible.
• Benchmarks can be used for establishing baseline values of productivity for the purposes of impact assessment, and to estimate potential gains in productivity expected from offsetting to establish equivalency relative to the impact (especially for small to medium sized projects), including establishing offset ratios.
• The benchmark approach can provide a reference condition when site-specific data are available (e.g., degree of anomaly from the reference).
• In data deficient areas, transferrable landscape fish-production relationships could be used to inform benchmarks for the FPP assessment process.
• Ecoregions (25 000 to 500 000 km²) appeared to work relatively well as a broad scale stratification but smaller scales may be useful for predictions. Clear examples in the literature exist as to how to achieve an appropriate scale relevant to the FPP and these consider information on drivers of production (e.g., nutrients, climate, etc.). Benchmarks may need to be established at multiple scales where feasible.
• Actual productivity may differ from expected/predicted productivity based on benchmarks thus several critical things to consider when developing and/or using regional benchmarks include: life history (what life stage was measured), environmental forcers (e.g., climate), human impacts, types of habitat used to establish the benchmark, species included in the productivity metrics, methods used to sample (i.e., capturing biomass for system or only a portion of the system), status of the resource, etc.
• Data and analyses presented at the meeting provided evidence of biologically significant differences in productivity of wadeable flowing riverine habitat among studies/regions in Canada.

This Science Advisory Report is from the September 29 to October 1, 2015 national peer review on Science Advice on Regional Productivity Benchmarks. Additional publications from this meeting will be posted on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science Advisory Schedule as they become available.

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