Enduring Econometrics, 1455 NW Leary Way Ste. 400, Seattle, WA, 98107, United States.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, Office of the Chief Financial Officer, Program Analysis Branch, 1335 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD, 20910, USA.
Environ Manage. 2022 Jul;70(1):64-78. doi: 10.1007/s00267-022-01636-5. Epub 2022 Apr 1.
While knowledge of the ecological impacts of marine debris is continually advancing, methods to evaluate the comparative scale of these impacts are less well developed. In the case of costly environmental restoration in marine and coastal environments, quantifying and comparing the ecological impacts of diverse forms of ecosystem injuries can facilitate a more efficient selection of restoration projects. This article proposes evaluating marine debris removal projects in an ecological service equivalency analysis framework that can be used to compare marine debris removal to other types of environmental restoration. Drawing on existing spatial and temporal data with respect to marine debris impacts on habitats and resources, we demonstrate how resource managers and organizations involved in marine debris removal can quantify the ecological service benefits of a removal project and use it to comparatively select between projects based on present value ecological benefits. This valuation can be useful in natural resource damage assessment restoration selection, and for directing limited funds to marine debris removal projects which produce the greatest gains in ecological services. This ecological scaling framework is applied to a seagrass injury case study to demonstrate its application for scaling marine debris removal as compensatory restoration.
虽然人们对海洋垃圾的生态影响的认识在不断提高，但评估这些影响的相对规模的方法却不太完善。在海洋和沿海环境进行昂贵的环境恢复的情况下，量化和比较不同形式的生态系统损伤的生态影响，可以更有效地选择恢复项目。本文提出了在生态服务等效性分析框架中评估海洋垃圾清除项目的方法，该方法可用于将海洋垃圾清除与其他类型的环境恢复进行比较。本文利用现有的关于海洋垃圾对栖息地和资源影响的时空数据，展示了资源管理者和参与海洋垃圾清除的组织如何量化清除项目的生态服务效益，并根据现值生态效益在项目之间进行比较选择。这种评估在自然资源损害评估、恢复选择以及将有限的资金用于产生最大生态效益的海洋垃圾清除项目方面都很有用。该生态尺度框架应用于海草损伤案例研究，以展示其在将海洋垃圾清除作为补偿性恢复进行尺度扩展方面的应用。
