Integrated environmental modeling and assessment of coastal ecosystems: Application for aquaculture management

This article presents an approach that couples coastal ecosystem modeling with integrated environmental assessment methodologies to support coastal management. The focus is to support the development of an ecosystem approach to aquaculture management including interactions with watershed substance loading. A Chinese bay, with intense aquaculture and multiple catchment uses, and where significant modeling efforts were undertaken is used as a case study. The ecosystem model developed for this bay is used to run scenarios that test the local management strategy for nutrient reduction. The corresponding ecological and economic impacts of the managers’ scenarios are analyzed by means of the Differential Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (ΔDPSIR) analysis. Emphasis is given to the analysis of the eutrophication process in the bay including present eutrophic condition and the expected changes due to the simulated scenarios. For this purpose, the Assessment of Estuarine Trophic Status (ASSETS) screening model is a valuable tool to interpret and classify the data and model outputs regarding eutrophication condition and to evaluate the manageable level of the nutrient loading entering in the bay.