1. Concept of Ecosystem Carrying Capacity for Marine Ecosystem Management
Sinjae Yoo
KORDI
Ansan, South Korea

2. Outline Why a new concept? Ecosystem services
Interactions, linkages, and tradeoffs
Ecosystem Carrying Capacity
Definition
Properties
Future directions

3. YSLME Project
Project Title: “Reducing Environment Stress in the Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem”.
Project Objective: Ecosystem-based Environmentally-Sustainable management and Use of the YSLME and its Watershed: Reducing Development Stress and Promoting sustainable Development of the Ecosystem from a Densely Populated, Heavily Urbanised, Industrialised Semi-Enclosed Shelf Sea

4. Five major environmental problems in the Yellow Sea ecosystem (from TDA report)
Marine environmental pollution
Marine and coastal habitat modification
Change in ecosystem structures and functions
Unsustainable fisheries
Unsustainable mariculture practices

5. Since we identified the major problems, all we have to do is to solve each problem?

6. Interactions between ecosystems and human societies
Climate systems
Human societies
Indirect drivers
Provisioning
Supporting
Ecosystem
Regulating
Direct drivers
Cultural
Services
Benefits people get from ecosystems
Drivers
Factors that change ecosystem structures, rates, and processes

7. Provisioning services of YSE
Foods
wild fish, shellfish, algae, etc
Aquaculture
Genetic resources
New materials
Biofuels

8. Regulation services of YSE
Sewage treatment (water quality regulation)
Disease control
Climate regulation

9. Supporting services of YSE
Nutrient cycling
Primary and secondary production, and their transfer
Maintenance of biodiversity

10. Cultural services of YSE
Spiritual/religious values
Aesthetic values
Recreation and ecotourism
Cultural diversity

11. Multiple drivers Fisheries Resources Climate change Fishing
Aqua-culture
pollution
Climate change
Habitat degradation
Ecosystem changes

12. Land use (agriculture, sewage)
HUMAN ACTIVITIES
Land use (agriculture, sewage)
Fisheries
Jellyfish
Construction/
Water use
Aquaculture
Climate change
Precipitation
Hypoxia
Freshwater
input
Nutrients
N:P:Si
Food web/
Productivity
Temp.
Stratification
Eutrophication
HAB
Sea level rise.

13. Water Quality regulation
Fish catch
Overfishing
aquaculture
Provisioning
services
biofuels
Genetic
resources
pollution
Primary and
secondary
production
Maintenance of
biodiversity
Supporting
services
Habitat
modification
Nutrient
cycling
Water Quality regulation
Unhealthy
Aquaculture
Climate control
Regulating
services
Disease control
Climate
change

14. Necessity of a unified concept
Ecosystems provide many services.
We cannot manage each service separately.
There are linkages and tradeoffs among services.
Not all the drivers are controllable (e.g., climate change).
There is a limit in ecosystem services and the services are inter-dependent.

15. The limit of services will be determined by various ecological processes, which in turn are determined by ecosystem configuration and state.
There is a need for a comprehensive and holistic quantity that describe this capacity of ecosystem to provide its services.
Such capacity will change under different environmental conditions.

16. Logistic model Verhulst (1838, 1845)
K=Carrying Capacity
Logistic growth

17. Carrying Capacity in trout aquaculture (Le Cren, 1973)
Harvest stock (ind. m-2)
Numbers are in logarithm
Initial stock (ind. m-2)

18. Previous usage of the term ‘Carrying Capacity’
Human population dynamics (Verhulst, 1838 & 1845)
One of the basic concepts in ecology: r-K selection,
PICES Science Program ( ): “Climate Change and Carrying Capacity”
Ability of ecosystems to sustain fishery and other living resources,” (Olsen, et al., 2006).

19. Ecosystem Carrying Capacity
Capacity of an ecosystem to provide various services
The capacity is determined by ecosystem structure, productivity and habitat integrity.
This capacity will change as societal requirements increase and climate change accelerates.

20. ECC through time
Time

21. Determinants of ECC and drivers
Ecosystem structure
Trophic structure (e.g., fishing, climate change, nutrient budgets)
Biological Productivity
Nutrient budget, climate change (stratification, alteration of freshwater cycle, solar radiation, etc)
Habitats integrity
Water quality (eutrophication, aquaculture)
Habitat destruction and modification
hypoxia

22. Further questions How to quantify ECC?
Different approaches for services?
Provisioning services
Regulating
Supporting
Cultural
Or unified valuation?

23. Properties of ECC
How long does an ecosystem can provide its services at certain level? (sustainability)
How much an ecosystem provide that service? (maximum Capacity)
How stable are the services? (resilience)

24. Future directions for YSLME
Theoretical formulation
Quantification of ECC
Properties of ECC and their behavior
Assessment of ECC of YSLME
Multi-scale approaches are desirable
Modeling of ECC of YSLME based on scenarios
How will it change given the changes in the ecosystem by climate changes
Regional scenarios

25. Summary
For a unified concept of ecosystem management, ECC is proposed.
ECC can conveys in the time of rapidly changing world.
Further formulation is needed to use the new concept.
Scenarios-modeling in regional scale will be useful for future management.

26. Thank you!