UNESCO/IOC's Global Investigation of Pollution in the Marine Environment (GIPME) program is aimed at assessing the presence of contaminants and their effects on human health, marine ecosystems, and marine resources and amenities (both living and non-living). Under the auspices of GIPME, a new initiative is being pursued to develop indicators for assessing the condition (or "health") of marine benthic communities. This initiative is pursuant to chapter 40 of Agenda 21, which calls for the development of indicators for sustaining healthy ocean ecosystems. This new "benthic health" initiative also relates to the Health of the Oceans (HOTO) module of IOC's Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The work will support a major goal of the HOTO module, which is to provide environmental health criteria and indices that can serve as early warning signals of change in the quality of the world's ocean environment. Efforts commenced during the fall of 1999 to form a small committee of scientists, hereafter referred to as the Ad Hoc Benthic Indicator Group (BIG), to provide the expertise and data needed to carry out this initiative. Though the committee is still in the process of being formed, a partial group of members assembled at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, December 6-9, 1999, to describe the kinds of data that they could provide in support of this initiative and to begin identifying overall goals, approaches, products, and milestones. Results of this initial planning meeting are presented in the following report. Overall scope and objectives, preliminary recommendations on possible indicators and analysis approaches, and a listing of potential products and milestones are included in the present Section I. Summaries of meeting presentations are given in Section II. Contact information on committee members and other meeting participants is listed in Section III. A copy of the meeting agenda is provided in Section IV. Lastly, Section V shows preliminary results on the examination of benthic-TOC relationships and their potential use as indicators of anthropogenic stress in test data sets from various committee members.
Ad hoc Benthic Indicator Group - Results of Initial Planning Meeting
P Magni;
2000
Abstract
UNESCO/IOC's Global Investigation of Pollution in the Marine Environment (GIPME) program is aimed at assessing the presence of contaminants and their effects on human health, marine ecosystems, and marine resources and amenities (both living and non-living). Under the auspices of GIPME, a new initiative is being pursued to develop indicators for assessing the condition (or "health") of marine benthic communities. This initiative is pursuant to chapter 40 of Agenda 21, which calls for the development of indicators for sustaining healthy ocean ecosystems. This new "benthic health" initiative also relates to the Health of the Oceans (HOTO) module of IOC's Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The work will support a major goal of the HOTO module, which is to provide environmental health criteria and indices that can serve as early warning signals of change in the quality of the world's ocean environment. Efforts commenced during the fall of 1999 to form a small committee of scientists, hereafter referred to as the Ad Hoc Benthic Indicator Group (BIG), to provide the expertise and data needed to carry out this initiative. Though the committee is still in the process of being formed, a partial group of members assembled at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, December 6-9, 1999, to describe the kinds of data that they could provide in support of this initiative and to begin identifying overall goals, approaches, products, and milestones. Results of this initial planning meeting are presented in the following report. Overall scope and objectives, preliminary recommendations on possible indicators and analysis approaches, and a listing of potential products and milestones are included in the present Section I. Summaries of meeting presentations are given in Section II. Contact information on committee members and other meeting participants is listed in Section III. A copy of the meeting agenda is provided in Section IV. Lastly, Section V shows preliminary results on the examination of benthic-TOC relationships and their potential use as indicators of anthropogenic stress in test data sets from various committee members.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
