Bridging Risk Assessment Of Human Pressure And Ecosystem Status

Within the frame of a natural environment impacted by anthropogenic activities, assessing and quantifying their related pressures are essential to its management and are linked to its status. However, there are no, or very few, geographical areas where thorough knowledge of human uses and sources of impact is available as a basis to quantify these pressures. For this reason, we propose to grade impact sources based on risk assessment index using semi-quantitative rating grids. The impact source is defined as the environmental factor responsible for the impact (e.g., sewage, fishing activity or coastal development). The environmental Risk Assessment of Marine Ecosystems (RAME) is based on several combined rating criteria in order to obtain a criticality score. These semi-quantitative criteria are: (S) the sensitivity of the environment, the ecosystem or the species; (I) the importance of the impact source; (D) the distance from the impact source, and (O) the frequency of occurrence of the pressure. Thereafter, the index is weighted by a criterion of control that is related to the environmental management (M). This method can be adapted to all types of pressure and is not specific to any situation.