Publication Date:
2012-08-17
Description:
The ocean plays a critical role in supporting human well-being, from providing food, livelihoods and recreational opportunities to regulating the global climate. Sustainable management aimed at maintaining the flow of a broad range of benefits from the ocean requires a comprehensive and quantitative method to measure and monitor the health of coupled human-ocean systems. We created an index comprising ten diverse public goals for a healthy coupled human-ocean system and calculated the index for every coastal country. Globally, the overall index score was 60 out of 100 (range 36-86), with developed countries generally performing better than developing countries, but with notable exceptions. Only 5% of countries scored higher than 70, whereas 32% scored lower than 50. The index provides a powerful tool to raise public awareness, direct resource management, improve policy and prioritize scientific research.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Halpern, Benjamin S -- Longo, Catherine -- Hardy, Darren -- McLeod, Karen L -- Samhouri, Jameal F -- Katona, Steven K -- Kleisner, Kristin -- Lester, Sarah E -- O'Leary, Jennifer -- Ranelletti, Marla -- Rosenberg, Andrew A -- Scarborough, Courtney -- Selig, Elizabeth R -- Best, Benjamin D -- Brumbaugh, Daniel R -- Chapin, F Stuart -- Crowder, Larry B -- Daly, Kendra L -- Doney, Scott C -- Elfes, Cristiane -- Fogarty, Michael J -- Gaines, Steven D -- Jacobsen, Kelsey I -- Karrer, Leah Bunce -- Leslie, Heather M -- Neeley, Elizabeth -- Pauly, Daniel -- Polasky, Stephen -- Ris, Bud -- St Martin, Kevin -- Stone, Gregory S -- Sumaila, U Rashid -- Zeller, Dirk -- England -- Nature. 2012 Aug 30;488(7413):615-20. doi: 10.1038/nature11397.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, 735 State St Suite 300, Santa Barbara, California 93101, USA. halpern@nceas.ucsb.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22895186" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Conservation of Natural Resources/*statistics & numerical data
;
*Ecosystem
;
Environmental Monitoring/*methods
;
Environmental Policy
;
Fisheries
;
Geography
;
Human Activities/standards/statistics & numerical data
;
*Internationality
;
Marine Biology/*methods
;
Oceanography/*methods
;
Oceans and Seas
;
Recreation
;
*Seawater
;
Water Pollution/analysis
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
