Proceedings 2024/024

Proceedings of the National Advisory Meeting on Cumulative Impact Mapping and Vulnerability of Marine Ecosystems to Multiple Anthropogenic Stressors; November 29–30 and December 2, 2021

Chairperson: Tana Worcester

Editors: Alex Tuen, Noreen Kelly, Jocelyn Nelson, Selina Agbayani, Cathryn Murray, Grace Murphy, and Tana Worcester

Summary

A Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) virtual National Peer Review Meeting was held November 29–30 and December 2, 2021 to provide science advice on cumulative impact mapping and vulnerability of marine ecosystems to multiple anthropogenic stressors. This science advice will be used to inform marine spatial planning processes.

This process reviews the established Halpern et al. (2008) method to see how it could and should be used, with the goal of establishing expertise that Fisheries and Oceans Canada could deploy. The Cumulative Impact Mapping (CIM) method is an existing, published, semi-quantitative method that spatially represents the additive effects of anthropogenic activities and stressors on marine ecosystems. CIM gathers information about human activities and ecosystem components at the desired resolution, transforms the stressors to the same scale, adds the expected impacts together into a total cumulative impact score, and presents a map of the cumulative impacts in an area. CIM is a spatially-explicit cumulative impact model that requires three types of data: habitat classes, human activities and stressors, and a matrix of vulnerability scores.

External reviewers provided their comments on, and suggested improvements for, the Working Paper. This Working Paper reviews the Halpern et al. (2008) work for a modern Canadian context, while acknowledging that it inherited the legacy of its applications, and did not perform or redo that original work. The Working Paper also sought to balance the level of detail needed in order to understand the model, preferring to be high level without much detail on the individual layers. Discussion of the advantages and weaknesses of the method were helpful although weaknesses were largely knowledge problems rather than methodological problems. The CIM method is modular and easy to adapt and could be useful in a number of ways for marine spatial planning.

Proceedings 2024/024 (PDF, 443 KB)

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