The Advisory Panel on Anthropogenic Influences on Coastal Ecosystems (AICE) is focused primarily on human influences on coastal (near-shore
to continental shelf) ecosystems, such as runoff, pollution, effects
of fishing, existence of non-indigenous species, and loss of habitat.
Even though AICE will keep all FUTURE key questions in mind while pursuing its activities, the purview
of AICE is mainly the key questions
(3) How do human activities
affect coastal ecosystems and how are societies affected by changes
in these ecosystems? and (1) What determines an ecosystem’s
intrinsic resilience and vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic
forcing?
AICE will be associated initially with the following expert groups:
-
Section on Ecology of harmful algal blooms in the North Pacific
(HAB-S)
- Working Group on Non-indigenous Aquatic Species (WG 21)
-
Working Group on Environmental Interactions of Marine Aquaculture
(WG 24)
The expert groups associated with AICE should consider issues such as:
-
Integrated understanding of past coastal
ecosystem change caused by anthropogenic forcing, especially
hypoxia, eutrophication, chemical pollution, and fishing-related
shifts in community or size structure and how societies have
been affected by these changes;
-
Comparing the responses of sensitive organisms
to specific anthropogenic perturbations and internal community
shifts using retrospective data analysis, ecosystem models,
field studies, and laboratory and manipulation experiments;
-
Understanding how continued eutrophication,
pollution, fishing, and other anthropogenic pressures change
future coastal marine ecosystems and how these affect societies;
and evaluating how societies can sustain their resilience to
inevitable ecosystem changes, and which societal choices lessen
the stresses placed on ecosystems.
The expert groups associated with both AICE and COVE should consider issues such as:
-
Understanding how natural and human perturbations
cascade through ecosystems;
-
The relevance of key species concepts in
North Pacific marine ecosystems and their sensitivity to perturbation;
-
Identifying amplifiers and buffers of perturbation
effects in marine food webs and what scales and magnitudes of
perturbations may induce irreversible ecosystem change;
-
Understanding the mechanisms of recruitment
variation in populations of commercially valuable organisms
such as finfish, shellfish, shrimp, squid, kelp, etc.