Ecosystem services in connected catchment to coast ecosystems: Monitoring to detect emerging trends

摘要: There is an increasing need for long-term monitoring of ecosystems and their services to inform on-ground management. The supply of many ecosystem services relies on connections that span multiple ecosystems. Monitoring the underlying condition of interconnected ecosystems is therefore required to track effectiveness of past interventions and identify impending change. Here we test the performance of indicators of ecosystem services with the aim of identifying the time-scales over which indicators of ecosystem services responded to change. We chose a case-study of a catchment in Northern Australia, where water resource development is a threat to the river flows that support vegetation growth and the life-cycle of coastal fishery species. We developed a novel approach to performance testing that drew on state-space modelling to capture ecological dynamics, and structural equation modelling to capture …