The ecosystem approach seems to me a very interesting approach to marine protected areas. First, we must make an inventory of services provided by different ecosystems. Then the mapping from natural habitats can develop a mapping of ecosystem services. Without attempting to evaluate the services provided by an ecosystem in monetary terms, inventory and mapping of these services can be a very useful tool in the management of a territory.

It is also an inventory of services provided by protective measures (nature reserve, national park, marine park, ...). The preservation of biodiversity is often experienced as a generator cost constraint and not as a source of profits. Fishermen can eg fear economic losses related to the creation of a protected, while its purpose is to regenerate fisheries marine area. In protected natural areas only management costs are accounted for and the benefits are not included in the decision process. The use of economic assessments of biodiversity could perhaps change our view of the protective measures in place. A Nature Reserve can for example be seen as a constraint, where strong regulation was put in place, but it is also a "label" of the environmental quality of the site as a recoverable asset for tourism. Protected areas generate many services, scientific term, cultural, tourist ....

The concept of ecosystem services is a transversal concept that allows to take into account both the social issues and environmental issues. The study area is seen as a "social" ecosystem where the environment and the many uses are interrelated. The central contribution of this ecosystem service approach is to highlight the interactions environment and society that were previously difficult to materialize and that men are not always conscious. The ecosystem approach appears as an attempt to rebalance the relationship between man and nature (Serpantié et al., 2012), where the man is a component of the ecosystems in which they live, moving closer to a Spinoza's worldview (Naess, 2008).

Dear Sharlene, Here's an old method we tried in the Chesapeake. It only works if you know the netire network of trophic exchanges. (http://people.biology.ufl.edu/ulan/pubs/ContrVlu.PDF). Good luck! Bob Ulanowicz

Thanks Alain and Robert for your comments. We have begun to inventory and map out the ecosystem services in our study area. Unfortunately, we don't have enough information to decipher a complete network of trophic exchanges so we're looking into other approaches using expert consultation as a base (and on which i've posted another question!). Thanks again, Sharlene

lack of information on the functioning of ecosystems and trophic networks is the primary gliomas so dificult in this type of work. We participate in a project of this type across several sites in the English Channel with the English. I am personally very interrested by what you get done and I love your work, when will be available.

good luck

Hi Sharlene, colleagues on the EU funded ODEMM project have developed a typology for marine ecosystem services (link from our website, http://www.liv.ac.uk/odemm/publications/ Bohnke-Henrichs et al. 2013).

More recently we have developed an approach to explore which ecosystem services might be affected by different management options (including spatial management tools) based on links between ecosystem components and ecosystem services provision. It has been designed to be applied where data is lacking (which is most cases!) to help decision makers think about the trade offs in decision making. We are writing this up at the moment, hope to be submitting early next year and could send on to you at this stage...