Sustaining the World's Large Marine Ecosystems
Sustaining the World's Large Marine Ecosystems
Sustaining the World's Large Marine Ecosystems
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The UNEP LME Report (2008): Global Trends<br />
The 852 page UNEP <strong>Large</strong> <strong>Marine</strong> Ecosystem Report is <strong>the</strong> result of a<br />
collaborative effort with NOAA’s <strong>Large</strong> <strong>Marine</strong> <strong>Ecosystems</strong> Program and <strong>the</strong><br />
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to provide a global view of<br />
baseline ecological conditions of <strong>the</strong> World’s LMEs. Each of <strong>the</strong> briefs is based<br />
on <strong>the</strong> five module LME assessment framework of i) productivity, ii) fish and<br />
fisheries, iii) pollution and ecosystem health, iv) socioeconomics, and v)<br />
governance. Time series trends are projected for LME: productivity (gCm -2 yr -1 ),<br />
ocean fronts, sea surface temperatures (SSTs), SST anomalies, annual fisheries<br />
biomass yields, values of catches, mean trophic levels, fisheries conditions<br />
relative to stock conditions, and <strong>the</strong> amount of primary productivity required to<br />
support <strong>the</strong> mean annual catch levels.<br />
In <strong>the</strong> opening chapter, <strong>the</strong> complementarity between UNEP’s Regional Seas<br />
activities and <strong>the</strong> GEF-supported <strong>Large</strong> <strong>Marine</strong> Ecosystem projects is described.<br />
The next three chapters provide a global perspective based on comparative LME<br />
trend analyses—for fish and fisheries by D. Pauly et al. (2008); for effects of<br />
global warming on fisheries biomass yields by Sherman et al. (2008); and for <strong>the</strong><br />
growing problem of nutrient overenrichment from land-based sources by<br />
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