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HERO ID
3941448
Reference Type
Journal Article
Title
Spatial differentiation of marine eutrophication damage indicators based on species density
Author(s)
Cosme, N; Jones, MC; Cheung, WWL; Larsen, HF
Year
2017
Is Peer Reviewed?
Yes
Journal
Ecological Indicators
ISSN:
1470-160X
EISSN:
1872-7034
Volume
73
Page Numbers
676-685
DOI
10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.10.026
Web of Science Id
WOS:000398334400067
Abstract
Marine eutrophication refers to an ecosystem response to the loading of nutrients, typically nitrogen (N), to coastal waters where several impacts may occur. The increase of planktonic growth due to N-enrichment fuels the organic carbon cycles and may lead to excessive oxygen depletion in benthic waters. Such hypoxic conditions may cause severe effects on exposed ecological communities. The biologic processes that determine production, sink, and aerobic respiration of organic material, as a function of available N, are coupled with the sensitivity of demersal species to hypoxia to derive an indicator of the Ecosystem Response (ER) to N-uptake. The loss of species richness expressed by the ER is further modelled to a marine eutrophication Ecosystem Damage (meED) indicator, as an absolute metric of time integrated number of species disappeared (species yr), by applying a newly-proposed and spatially-explicit factor based on species density (SD). The meED indicator is calculated for 66 Large Marine Ecosystems and ranges from 1.6 x 10(-12) species kgN(-1) in the Central Arctic Ocean, to 4.8 x 10(-8) species kgN-1 in the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf. The spatially explicit SDs contribute to the environmental relevance of meED scores and to the harmonisation of marine eutrophication impacts with other ecosystem-damage Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators. The novel features improve current methodologies and support the adoption of the meED indicator in LCIA for the characterization of anthropogenic-N emissions and thus contributing to the sustainability assessment of human activities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Exposure; Effect; Life cycle impact assessment; Ecosystem damage; Large marine ecosystems; Potentially affected fraction of species
Tags
•
ISA NOxSOxPM Ecology (2018)
Cited in the Second Draft
Appendix 10
•
ISA NOxSOxPM Ecology (2020- Final Project Page)
Cited
Appendix 10
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