Marine Ecosystem Services Modeling for Canadian Pacific Waters

Deep rooted connections between the ocean and coastal communities and cultures, including Coastal First Nations communities in Canada, deepens the importance of protecting and valuing these systems.

Commercial, recreational, and Food, Social and Ceremonial (FSC) fisheries, marine recreation and tourism, aquaculture, shipping and transportation, coastal forestry, energy production and transportation, and a variety of other social and economic uses all directly or indirectly rely on healthy and vibrant coastal environments, while also forming the basis of the lives of many Canadians.

The total value of these uses, and the array of other benefits and services provided by the ocean, especially to coastal Canadians, is often only partially-quantifiable. Further complications exist surrounding the monetary valuation of some crucial services, either where markets don’t exist to serve as proxies (e.g.

clean air and water), or where their benefits accrue over longer time horizons and indirectly to a large group of beneficiaries (e.g. stability or recovery of habitats). This often leads to many of the benefits for a given change in fisheries management to be included qualitatively in cost-benefit analyses, while costs can be calculated and measured.

In some instances, benefits of conservation are more difficult to understand than the costs that afford them. To better inform short- and long-term decision-making related to ocean resource management, approaches must be developed to accurately measure and communicate a more fulsome array of the benefits provided by the ocean to Canadian citizens.

One (1) avenue for discussing and estimating these benefits is quantitative modelling of Marine Ecosystem Services. The BC Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship (WLRS) previously led a Contract that produced ecosystem service models that estimate relative or absolute production of six services within a specified study area.

Geographic data representing specific marine conservation/human use scenarios can also be incorporated into the model for estimation of changes to service provision in response to changes in human pressures on ecosystem service provisioning. DFO has continued to develop these models to improve accuracy, parameterize models, and expand modelled services.

The existing suite of models incorporates several biological provisioning sub models from the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) suite produced by the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University.

It also incorporates one additional ecological and one socio-economic provisioning sub model, as well as a model of sponge ecosystem services based on DFO research in BC tidal waters (See Table 1). The overall framework allows an instance of each individual sub model to be confronted with a consistent set of user-inputted assumptions.

Sub model parameters including contributions of specific biological components to underlying processes, or impacts of human uses on these processes can also be modified. Model design also allows for the comparison of a consistent suite of indicators representing levels of MES provisioning across different spatial scenarios.

The goal of this work is to expand on the existing suite of models to broaden the range of marine ecosystem services considered, and/or the range of contributing components to those services. It is expected that any extension be compatible with existing model architecture. Proponents may be provided the existing model technical guidance document upon request, which includes advice and guidance for future modelling.