Fulton E A, Sainsbury K
CSIRO Environment, Hobart, TAS, Australia.
Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2025 Sep 2;15(1):32281. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-15322-z.
Ecosystem structure and function are seldom represented in ecological indicators used for resource management and conservation, despite their central position in stated objectives of international agreements and national policy on maintaining and conserving global ecosystems. Network theory provides capacity to change this situation. Inspired by the use of composite indicators in emergency warning, planning systems and in network analyses in many other applications, we show that a small suite of network-based indicators can provide a practical basis for measuring ecosystem structure in fisheries management. We suggest an Ecosystem Traits Index (ETI) that provides a rating of the combined ecosystem state and structural integrity. This index combines information captured by: the Hub index, which identifies species critical to system function; Gao's resilience score, which provides a measure of system resilience due to the density of connections and flow patterns in the ecosystem's food web; and the "Green Band" index (which measures pressure on ecosystem structure due to the mortality from human activities such as harvesting). Applying these indices to marine ecosystems of very different types showed that the combination of indicators is informative in each case and that each ecosystem's unique state results from fishing pressure, environmental change, and inherent ecosystem structural robustness. Simulation-based tests demonstrated the indicators rapidly respond to, and consistently reflect, ecosystem state changes across marine ecosystem types, though they cannot distinguish the effects of individual stressors such as fishing mortality, habitat modification, climate or other environmental changes. We have focused on fisheries because fishery indicators should, in principle, have utility across any form of marine ecosystem pressure.
尽管生态系统结构和功能在国际协定及国家关于维护和保护全球生态系统的政策既定目标中处于核心地位，但在用于资源管理和保护的生态指标中却很少有所体现。网络理论提供了改变这种状况的能力。受应急预警、规划系统以及许多其他应用中的网络分析中复合指标使用的启发，我们表明一小套基于网络的指标可为渔业管理中衡量生态系统结构提供实际依据。我们提出了一种生态系统特征指数（ETI），它能对生态系统的综合状态和结构完整性进行评级。该指数综合了以下信息：枢纽指数，用于识别对系统功能至关重要的物种；高氏恢复力得分，它根据生态系统食物网中的连接密度和流动模式来衡量系统恢复力；以及“绿带”指数（用于衡量诸如捕捞等人类活动造成的死亡率对生态系统结构的压力）。将这些指数应用于截然不同类型的海洋生态系统表明，指标组合在每种情况下都能提供信息，而且每个生态系统的独特状态是由捕捞压力、环境变化以及生态系统固有的结构稳健性导致的。基于模拟的测试表明，这些指标能迅速响应并持续反映不同类型海洋生态系统的状态变化，尽管它们无法区分诸如捕捞死亡率、栖息地改变、气候或其他环境变化等单个压力源的影响。我们之所以关注渔业，是因为渔业指标原则上应适用于任何形式的海洋生态系统压力情况。
