Finnish Environment Institute, Latokartanonkaari 11, 00790, Helsinki, Finland.
Åbo Akademi University, BioCity, 20500, Turku, Finland.
Ambio. 2022 Jul;51(7):1687-1697. doi: 10.1007/s13280-021-01692-x. Epub 2022 Jan 29.
Ecosystem-based management requires understanding of food webs. Consequently, assessment of food web status is mandatory according to the European Union's Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) for EU Member States. However, how to best monitor and assess food webs in practise has proven a challenging question. Here, we review and assess the current status of food web indicators and food web models, and discuss whether the models can help addressing current shortcomings of indicator-based food web assessments, using the Baltic Sea as an example region. We show that although the MSFD food web assessment was designed to use food web indicators alone, they are currently poorly fit for the purpose, because they lack interconnectivity of trophic guilds. We then argue that the multiple food web models published for this region have a high potential to provide additional coherence to the definition of good environmental status, the evaluation of uncertainties, and estimates for unsampled indicator values, but we also identify current limitations that stand in the way of more formal implementation of this approach. We close with a discussion of which current models have the best capacity for this purpose in the Baltic Sea, and of the way forward towards the combination of measurable indicators and modelling approaches in food web assessments.
基于生态系统的管理需要理解食物网。因此，根据欧盟海洋战略框架指令（MSFD），评估食物网状况对于欧盟成员国来说是强制性的。然而，如何在实践中最好地监测和评估食物网已被证明是一个具有挑战性的问题。在这里，我们回顾和评估当前食物网指标和食物网模型的现状，并以波罗的海为例区，讨论模型是否可以帮助解决基于指标的食物网评估的当前不足之处。我们表明，尽管 MSFD 食物网评估旨在单独使用食物网指标，但它们目前不太适合该目的，因为它们缺乏营养级联的互联性。然后，我们认为，为该地区发布的多个食物网模型具有为良好环境状况的定义、不确定性评估和未采样指标值的估计提供额外一致性的高潜力，但我们也确定了当前限制这种方法更正式实施的因素。最后，我们讨论了在波罗的海，当前哪些模型最适合用于此目的，以及在食物网评估中结合可衡量指标和建模方法的前进方向。
