Indicators of Stress in the Marine Benthos - Proceedings of an International workshop on the promotion and use of benthic tools for assessing the health of coastal marine ecosystems

Coastal marine ecosystems are increasingly affected by environmental stress and degradation due to pollution and other anthropogenic factors. A large number of research programmes have addressed these problems within various coastal regions and have produced highly useful comprehensive datasets on environmental and biotic conditions within these systems. A growing number of new tools and methods for assessing the health of these systems have emerged as well. The time has come now to provide an international framework for the assessment and use of common methodologies and tools as a pathway to greater capacity building, information exchange, and quality control and ultimately as a basis for improving our understanding of global patterns of ocean ecosystem health. The development of sensitive, reliable, and broadly applicable indicators of ocean health is relevant to Chapter 40 (Information for Decision-Making) of the Agenda 21 of UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), which calls for sustainable use of the ocean environment. In order to provide such a forum, an international workshop on "Indicators of Stress in the Marine Benthos", jointly organized by the Foundation IMC - International Marine Centre ONLUS and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, was held in Torregrande-Oristano, Sardinia (Italy) October 8th-9th 2004. Key goals of the workshop were: (1) to exchange information on the scope and results of various programmes dealing with the development and application of environmental indicators for assessing and predicting the health of coastal ecosystems; (2) to promote the use of common approaches and tools for assessing the health of coastal marine ecosystems with applicable outputs to stakeholders and community end-users; and (3) to foster opportunities for the co-ordination of various international and national initiatives, as well as the integration of efforts across disciplines (e.g., the integration of results from field observations with related ecological and oceanographic modelling efforts). A major player in the organization of the workshop was UNESCO/IOC's Ad-Hoc Benthic Indicator Group, established in December 1999 for the similar purpose of developing recommendations for globally applicable indicators and techniques to use in measuring the health status of marine benthic communities. The workshop brought together international scientists and coastal managers in related fields including members of the UNESCO/IOC Ad-Hoc Benthic Indicator Group, the Benthic Ecology Working Group of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES-BEWG), the LaguNET (Italian Network on Transitional Systems), the APAT (Italian Agency for Environmental Protection and Technical Services), and a number of other universities and research institutions. Several themes were addressed during the workshop including: (1) an overview of ongoing national and international programmes related to the topic of "Indicators of Stress in the Marine Benthos"; (2) presentations on results of individual projects that are providing new advances in the development of ecological indicators (including new field assessment techniques, diagnostic indices and data-analysis methods, modelling procedures, ecological attributes with corresponding thresholds for risk assessment, and response-to-disturbance classification schemes); (3) the development of common environmental indicators and their implications for marine and coastal ecosystem assessments; and (4) a discussion of ways to foster future collaboration among relevant initiatives brought by the participants to the workshop. These proceedings represent a compilation of the invited speakers relevant to the above themes and provide an important update on current efforts and capabilities in the use of marine benthic indicators for coastal marine assessments. Paolo Magni on behalf of the Scientific Committee