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Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA)

NOAA Institutional Repository

The NOAA Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) Program is a NOAA-wide initiative that oversees the direction and execution of Integrated Ecosystem Assessments within the United States ocean and coastal ecosystems. NOAA IEA is an approach that integrates all components of an ecosystem, including humans, into the decision-making process so that managers can balance trade-offs and determine what is more likely to achieve their desired goals. This approach provides the science necessary to carry out Ecosystem-Based Management and is a key part of NOAA’s ecosystem science enterprise. The program has a commitment to ensure the best available science is used to inform management decisions. The program does this by implementing an iterative multi-step approach that provides a framework to support ecosystem-based management - leveraging and integrating existing science and research activities and programs in NOAA and also building additional capacity within the IEA program to assess a marine ecosystem as a whole to provide natural resource managers with a broader understanding of the ecosystem and make fully informed decisions. The program strives to be inclusive, building a constantly growing interdisciplinary network of science and management partners both internal and external to NOAA.

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Showing 1 - 20 of 78 results
  • DecisionSupport Tools For Dynamic Management
    Decision‐Support Tools For Dynamic Management
    Welch, Heather ;
    Brodie, Stephanie
    2019 | Conserv Biol. 2020 Jun;34(3):589-599.
    Spatial management is a valuable strategy to advance regional goals for nature conservation, economic development, and human health. One challenge of spatial management is navigating the prioritization of multiple features. This challenge becomes more pronounced in dynamic management scenarios, in which boundaries are flexible in space and time in ...
  • Fluctuating Fishing Intensities And Climate Dynamics Reorganize The Gulf Of Mexicos Fisheries Resources
    Fluctuating Fishing Intensities And Climate Dynamics Reorganize The Gulf Of Mexico's Fisheries Resources
    Kilborn, Joshua P. ;
    Drexler, Michael
    2018 | Ecosphere 9(11): e02487
    Integrated ecosystem assessment provides a practical framework for implementing ecosystem‐based fisheries management (EBFM) while also balancing socioeconomic and ecological objectives. However, significant challenges remain, including (1) the identification of relevant ecosystem‐level fisheries management indicators; (2) quantitatively describing ...
  • Major Shifts in Pelagic Micronekton and Macrozooplankton Community Structure in an Upwelling Ecosystem Related to an Unprecedented Marine Heatwave
    Major Shifts in Pelagic Micronekton and Macrozooplankton Community Structure in an Upwelling Ecosystem Related to an Unprecedented Marine Heatwave
    Brodeur, Richard D. ;
    Auth, Toby D.
    2019 | Front. Mar. Sci., 07 May 2019
    The community structure of pelagic zooplankton and micronekton may be a sensitive indicator of changes in environmental conditions within the California Current ecosystem. Substantial oceanographic changes in 2015 and 2016, due to the anomalously warm ocean conditions associated with a large-scale marine heatwave perturbation, resulted in onshore a ...
  • Submarine canyons represent an essential habitat network for krill hotspots in a Large Marine Ecosystem
    Submarine canyons represent an essential habitat network for krill hotspots in a Large Marine Ecosystem
    Santora, Jarrod A. ;
    Zeno, Ramona
    2018 | Scientific Reports 8 (7579) 
    Submarine canyon systems are ubiquitous features of marine ecosystems, known to support high levels of biodiversity. Canyons may be important to benthic-pelagic ecosystem coupling, but their role in concentrating plankton and structuring pelagic communities is not well known. We hypothesize that at the scale of a large marine ecosystem, canyons pro ...
  • Ocean Futures Under Ocean Acidification Marine Protection And Changing Fishing Pressures Explored Using A Worldwide Suite Of Ecosystem Models
    Ocean Futures Under Ocean Acidification, Marine Protection, And Changing Fishing Pressures Explored Using A Worldwide Suite Of Ecosystem Models
    Olsen, Erik ;
    Kaplan, Isaac C.
    2018 | Frontiers in Marine Science, 5(64).
    Ecosystem-based management (EBM) of the ocean considers all impacts on and uses of marine and coastal systems. In recent years, there has been a heightened interest in EBM tools that allow testing of alternative management options and help identify tradeoffs among human uses. End-to-end ecosystem modelling frameworks that consider a wide range of m ...
  • Conceptual Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Health
    Conceptual Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Health
    Harwell, Mark A ;
    Gentile, John H
    2018 | Integr Environ Assess Manag. 2019 Jul; 15(4): 544–564.
    Over the past century, the environment of the Gulf of Mexico has been significantly altered and impaired by extensive human activities. A national commitment to restore the Gulf was finally initiated in response to the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Consequently, there is a critical need for an assessment framework and associate ...
  • Warm dry winters truncate timing and size distribution of seawardmigrating salmon across a large regulated watershed
    Warm, dry winters truncate timing and size distribution of seaward-migrating salmon across a large, regulated watershed
    Munsch, Stuart H. ;
    Greene, Correigh M.
    2019 | Ecol Appl. 2019 Jun; 29(4): e01880.
    Ecologists are pressed to understand how climate constrains the timings of annual biological events (phenology). Climate influences on phenology are likely significant in estuarine watersheds because many watersheds provide seasonal fish nurseries where juvenile presence is synched with favorable conditions. While ecologists have long recognized th ...
    Supporting Files
  • The Response of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to Climate Change
    The Response of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to Climate Change
    Alexander, Michael A. ;
    Shin, Sang-ik
    2019 | J. Clim. (2019) 33(2): 405–428
    ROMS, a high-resolution regional ocean model, was used to study how climate change may affect the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. A control (CTRL) simulation was conducted for the recent past (1976–2005), and simulations with additional forcing at the surface and lateral boundaries, obtained from three different global climate models (GCMs) using the ...
  • Evidence that summer jellyfish blooms impact Pacific Northwest salmon production
    Evidence that summer jellyfish blooms impact Pacific Northwest salmon production
    Ruzicka, James J. ;
    Daly, Elizabeth A.
    2016 | Ecosphere, 7(4), e01324.
    Interannual variability in salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) production in the northeast Pacific is understood to be driven by oceanographic variability and bottom-up processes affecting prey availability to juvenile salmon. Scyphozoan jellyfish have an important role in shaping the pathways of energy flow through pelagic food webs. While jellyfish obtain ...
  • A Dynamic Ocean Management Tool To Reduce Bycatch And Support Sustainable Fisheries
    A Dynamic Ocean Management Tool To Reduce Bycatch And Support Sustainable Fisheries
    Hazen, Elliott L. ;
    Scales, Kylie L.
    2018 | Science Advances, 4(5), 7.
    Seafood is an essential source of protein for more than 3 billion people worldwide, yet bycatch of threatened species in capture fisheries remains a major impediment to fisheries sustainability. Management measures designed to reduce bycatch often result in significant economic losses and even fisheries closures. Static spatial management approache ...
  • Potential overlap between cetaceans and commercial groundfish fleets that operate in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem
    Potential overlap between cetaceans and commercial groundfish fleets that operate in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem
    Feist, Blake E. ;
    Bellman, Marlene A.
    2015 | NOAA professional paper NMFS ; 17
    Cetacean populations are confronted by many anthropogenic threats, including commercial whaling, noise, vessel collisions, gear entanglement, exploitative competition, habitat disturbance, and global climate change. Evidence indicates that commercial fishing activities can have both direct (e.g., gear entanglement and bycatch) and indirect (e.g., p ...
  • Use of satellite data to identify critical periods for early life survival of northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine
    Use of satellite data to identify critical periods for early life survival of northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine
    Richards, R. Anne ;
    O'Reilly, John E.
    2016 | Fisheries Oceanography, 25(3), 306-319.
    The northern shrimp Pandalus borealis is at its southern limit in the Gulf of Maine (GOM), and recruitment success is higher in years with relatively cool water temperature. However, the mechanisms for the temperature effect are not clear. We used rolling window analysis of daily satellite data to identify critical periods for early life survival o ...
  • Relative resilience potential and bleaching severity in the West Hawaii Habitat Focus Area in 2015
    Relative resilience potential and bleaching severity in the West Hawai'i Habitat Focus Area in 2015
    Maynard, Jeffrey ;
    Conklin, Eric J.
    2016 | NOAA technical memorandum CRCP ; 26
    "The NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), NOAA Habitat Blueprint, and Sentinel Site Program have an overlapping Focus Area on the west side of the Island of Hawai'i that includes the South Kohala coastline. The Habitat Blueprint and Sentinel Sites focus areas have merged into a single effort. In addition, the NOAA Hawaiian Islands Humpback ...
  • Northeast Regional Action Plan NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy
    Northeast Regional Action Plan - NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy
    Hare, Jonathan A. ;
    Borggaard, Diane L. (Diane Lizbeth), 1966-
    2016 | NOAA technical memorandum NMFS-NE ; 239
    "The Northeast U.S. Shelf Ecosystem supports a wide array of living marine resources from Atlantic sea scallops, one of the most valuable, to the North Atlantic Right whale, one of the most endangered. All of these resources - fish, invertebrates, marine mammals, sea turtles, plants, habitats, and other ecosystem components - are being impacted by ...
  • Accounting for multiple pathways in the connections among climate variability ocean processes and coho salmon recruitment in the Northern California Current
    Accounting for multiple pathways in the connections among climate variability, ocean processes, and coho salmon recruitment in the Northern California Current
    Malick, Michael J. ;
    Cox, Sean P.
    2015 | Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 72(10), 1552-1564.
    Pathways linking climate to population dynamics of higher-trophic-level fish species such as Pacific salmon often involve a hierarchy in which regional-scale physical and biological processes mediate the effects of large-scale climate variability. We used probabilistic networks to investigate 17 potential ecological pathways linking climate to Oreg ...
  • Effective ScienceBased Fishery Management is Good for Gulf of Mexicos Bottom Line But Evolving Challenges Remain
    Effective Science-Based Fishery Management is Good for Gulf of Mexico's "Bottom Line" - But Evolving Challenges Remain
    Karnauskas, Mandy ;
    Allee, Rebecca J.
    2019 | Fisheries, 44(5), 239-242.
    No Description
  • Projections of the future occurrence distribution and seasonality of three Vibrio species in the Chesapeake Bay under a highemission climate change scenario
    Projections of the future occurrence, distribution, and seasonality of three Vibrio species in the Chesapeake Bay under a high-emission climate change scenario
    Muhling, Barbara A. ;
    Jacobs, John
    2017 | GeoHealth, 1(7), 278-296.
    Abstract Illness caused by pathogenic strains of Vibrio bacteria incurs significant economic and health care costs in many areas around the world. In the Chesapeake Bay, the two most problematic species are V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus, which cause infection both from exposure to contaminated water and consumption of contaminated seafood. ...
  • Evidence suggests potential transformation of the Pacific Arctic Ecosystem is underway
    Evidence suggests potential transformation of the Pacific Arctic Ecosystem is underway
    Huntington, Henry P. ;
    Danielson, Seth L.
    2020 | Nature Climate Change, 10: 342–348
    The highly productive northern Bering and Chukchi marine shelf ecosystem has long been dominated by strong seasonality in sea-ice and water temperatures. Extremely warm conditions from 2017 into 2019—including loss of ice cover across portions of the region in all three winters—were a marked change even from other recent warm years. Biological indi ...
    Supporting Files
  • Integrating Biodiversity and Environmental Observations in Support of National Marine Sanctuary and Large Marine Ecosystem Assessments
    Integrating Biodiversity and Environmental Observations in Support of National Marine Sanctuary and Large Marine Ecosystem Assessments
    Ruhl, Henry ;
    Brown, Jennifer
    2021 | Oceanography 34(2): 142-155
    Species and habitats are the subjects of legislation that mandates reporting of information on ecosystem conditions. Improvements in sensors, sampling platforms, information systems, and collaborations among experts and information users now enables more effective and up-to-date information to meet regional and national needs. Specifically, advance ...
  • Estimates of the Direct Effect of Seawater pH on the Survival Rate of Species Groups in the California Current Ecosystem
    Estimates of the Direct Effect of Seawater pH on the Survival Rate of Species Groups in the California Current Ecosystem
    Busch, D. Shallin ;
    McElhany, Paul
    2016 | PLOS ONE, 11(8), e0160669.
    Ocean acidification (OA) has the potential to restructure ecosystems due to variation in species sensitivity to the projected changes in ocean carbon chemistry. Ecological models can be forced with scenarios of OA to help scientists, managers, and other stakeholders understand how ecosystems might change. We present a novel methodology for developi ...
1 - 20 / 78