West Hawai'i integrated ecosystem assessment: ecosystem trends and status report

" The goal of this report is to summarize our current understanding of key ecosystem components necessary to consider for EBM of West Hawai'i's marine ecosystem. We begin by presenting a synthesis from a recent workshop focused on gathering place-based knowledge and expert opinion to help better understand some of the key social-ecological interactions in the region. Community members, scientists, and resource managers came together and developed a consensus of the primary pressures and drivers of coral reef ecosystem state. Informed by the outputs of the collaborative workshop and with current scientific understanding of subtropical marine ecosystems, we then present a series of ecosystem indicators suitable for tracking the status and trends in West Hawai'i's marine ecosystem (Table 1). Ecosystem indicators presented herein span a wide range of ecosystem components, from climatic and oceanographic drivers of ecosystem change, to the states of biological and human communities and associated activities. We expect that this interdisciplinary report will serve to elucidate linkages across the different components of West Hawai'i's marine ecosystem and that it will provide context as we move toward ecosystem-based management of this highly productive and biologically diverse marine ecosystem."--Introduction and background.[doi: 10.7289/V5/SP-PIFSC-16-004 (http://dx. doi. org/10.7289/V5/SP-PIFSC-16-004)]