ESIP, formed as a committee of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, is made up of expert advisors and volunteers from 73 organizations in the U.S. and Canada who provide information for a web-based reporting system for marine ecosystem monitoring.
The first of eight planned fact sheets—four have been published already by ESIP—describes the partnership itself, lists the organizations represented by advisors and volunteers and explains how ESIP was established in 2006 and explains the meaning, use and method of choosing the indicators.
Subcommittees to ESIP selected 22 priority indicators to be used as a first step in assessing overall ecosystem health in the Gulf of Maine. Besides this first explanatory fact sheet, areas chosen as focus areas include the three already published—Aquatic Habitats, Climate Change and Aquaculture— as well as future fact sheets on Coastal Development, Contaminants, Eutrophication and Fisheries.
Each focus topic uses several of the 22 selected indicators, compares them to standards and targets in the states and provinces, and points out trends, or whether a cause and effect relationship exists.
This paper also explains how focus areas were chosen and how indicators for each focus areas interact with and affect the others. Ffor instance, climate change indicators such as precipitation, directly influence aquatic habitats indicators, such as the extent of eelgrass, which the affects fisheries indicators such as production density.
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Climate Change in the Gulf of Maine
This fact sheet points out that climate change will ultimately affect everything else in the Gulf of Maine—ecosystems, habitats and coastal communities.
Indicators used for climate change are sea level, air temperature and precipitation. Trends for precipitation by decade are mapped throughout the region, and the impact of extreme precipitation trends on wastewater systems are explained.
A chart shows the rate of change in sea levels around the Gulf over periods ranging from 20 to 109 years, depending on the data available in an area. The average for the Gulf was a 60-year reporting period registering a 2.0 mm rise in sea level annually.
Air temperature around the Gulf, affected by both global and regional influences, has been on the rise for decades in 13 out of 14 sites from 1-2 degreesF (0.5-1 degree C) per century, while a several showed increase of double those figures.
Experts contributing to the fact sheet say these regional warming trends of air temperature over the past century cannot be explained by natural climate variation alone, but must include greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols in the global climate system.
Around the Gulf, annual average precipitation has increased by 5 percent during the past century, while globally, the average increase is 2 percent. Extreme precipitation events are on the increase. The fact sheet explains their effect on water management systems.
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Aquaculture in the Gulf of Maine
The Aquaculture fact sheet focuses on 13 farmed species throughout the Gulf, using economic value and the acreage of permitted aquaculture sites as indicators. The paper also discusses the effects of climate change and the environmental effects of bivalve shellfish culture.
This paper also points out how different regulations from one state or province to another have shaped the growth of the industry, which is a dominant industry in some parts of the Bay of Fundy.
Integrated, multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) includes sustainable diets that utilize extractive species and excess nutrients to feed the animals. the paper states that IMTA has the possibility to fulfill the need for sustainable aquaculture, which “should be ecologically efficient, environmentally benign, product-diversified, profitable and beneficial to society.”
The 13 dominant species included in the paper are: Atlantic salmon, bay scallops, blue mussels, cod, Eastern/American oysters, Eropean oysters, giant sea scallops/sea scallops, halibut, quahogs, rainbow trout, soft shell clams, surf clams and urchins.
The economic value of various finfish and shellfish to the different states and provinces varies by species and jurisdiction, and many fluctuate for various reasons, but the industry as a whole provided an overall value to the Gulf region in 2008 of $247.4 million US ($263.75 CN).
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ESIP Fact Sheet for Aquatic Habitats
Aquatic Habitats in the Gulf of Maine focuses on three indicators to assess the health of habitats: the extent of salt marsh, the extent of eelgrass and the number of tidal restrictions.
These indicators were chosen, authors explain, because they “work in concert with each other to provide an essential look at the larger system.” Both salt marshes and eelgrass beds are considered prime nursery areas for species that include fish and crustaceans.
Salt marsh areas around the Gulf of Maine are estimated at 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares), a number greatly reduced, say experts, since the time of European settlement due to filling, draining and diking the marshes, plus impacts from upland runoff.
Eelgrass beds, although the cost of surveys has hampered the regularity of measurement, show a marked decline in some states between 1995 and the present. Experts say recent losses are mostly due to effects from excess nutrients.
Tidal restrictions include dikes and causeways which alter the normal flooding and draining of marshes. Problems associated with them include reducted salinities, poor drainage, freshwater flooding, dominance by invasive plants and interference with normal movements of fish.
The fact sheet includes maps that indicate locations of obstructions and locations of eelgrass beds and salt marshes.
All fact sheets and ESIP information may be found at:
http://www.gulfofmaine.org/esip/
