Cumulative Effects

Abstract

The marine environment is currently subject to a number of pressures, many of which are derived from human activities. They include climate change, the extraction of resources, pollution (from land and marine sources) and invasive species, resulting in biodiversity loss, habitat damage and fragmentation and dis-ease (e.g., Evans and others, 2017). The aim of ecosystem-based management is to balance human activities with environmental steward-ship in order to maintain ecosystem proper-ties, functions and services.1 That requires an appreciation of how and to what extent human activities and natural events interact and affect ecosystem components and their functioning. It also requires the identification of solutions to prevent and mitigate the pressures being caused by such interactions (Halpern and others, 2008; Levin and others, 2009; Ban and others, 2010; Curtin and Prellezo, 2010). Those interactions are known as cumulative impacts or cumulative effects. [...]