Rapid Assessment of Marine Pollution (RAMP)

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Abstract

RAMP embraces the integrated use of methods for the rapid measurement, assessment and access to information on the nature, sources and influences of coastal environmental change. It embraces approaches held in the literature, research and programs of RAMP (Rapid Assessment of Marine Pollution) and the emerging work described as RASE (Rapid Assessment of Socio-Economic Indicators). To protect coastal ecosystems and the health of communities effectively, management infrastructure requires the tools and resources necessary to detect damage to coastal ecosystems and their components, identify causative agents, impose remedial action, and demonstrate that measures have been effective. Pragmatic monitoring and prediction capabilities must also be built to provide further confidence that human impacts are being minimized and that threats to human health have been contained. For most of the world, however, the ability to build such capability is a technical challenge and often cost prohibitive. These constraints point to the need to develop and expand the integrated use of simple, robust, cost-effective environmental assessment procedures. This paper suggests that a system built around the Rapid Assessment of Marine Pollution (RAMP) and the Rapid Assessment of Socio-Economic Indicators (RASE) can, should and in some cases already has been effective in meeting such informational and management needs.

Introduction

A tremendously diverse range of human activities impact coastal ecosystems. These include fisheries, mariculture operations, shipping, dredging, land reclamation, the discharge of sewage and industrial chemicals as well as more subtle, unintentional effects associated with diffuse sources of marine pollution. More indirect still are the consequences of atmospheric pollution and climate change. While such effects are often well recognized locally, we are unable currently to identify accurately, specific regions of the world where deterioration in ecosystem health has resulted in human health impacts. Indeed, our overall understanding of the socio-economic and health effects of coastal pollution is extremely limited.

The world’s oceans contain a wide range of species that are harvested for human consumption. It is estimated that more than 2 billion people world-wide depend on protein from the seas and coastal habitats, yet it is into this very environment that anthropogenic waste often accumulates. Contamination of seafood is inevitable.

In largest measure, the mitigation of seafoodborne public health risk will require the routine, integrated and consistent collection of data about coastal system dynamics and the risk profile of seafood products. The link between levels of ecosystem health, environmental/ecotoxicological risk, ecological stress, and public health concerns are established, but not particularly well understood from a mechanistic point of view. This unsatisfactory situation is driven less by the lack of interest in, or general insights about these relationships, than by a concern that acquisition of sufficient information is beyond the available technical and financial resources of those who need to know.

We will attempt to define, in the following account, the nature of the challenges we face and propose pragmatic, cost-effective approaches to guide policy formulation and management actions. While these approaches and techniques have been developed, and hold great value for a general understanding of coastal environmental conditions, their use as tools to mitigate seafoodborne risk are particularly promising.

Section snippets

Human impacts in coastal systems

One of the most significant challenges facing those responsible for the management of coastal systems is to achieve a more precise understanding of the nature and location of human interactions with coastal environmental dynamics (Depledge and Hopkin, 1995). This means developing operational systems determining the anthropogenic forces of change in coastal systems and a working understanding of how those changes affect human health. The challenge resides in understanding the significance of

Ongoing and emerging international efforts

The international community has embraced these informational needs through the establishment of several programs with related goals. The UNEP Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA), the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Land Ocean Interaction in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) (IGBP/LOICZ, 2003), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2003), and others, work to provide frameworks and data to better establish information-driven management practices. The establishment of the

Rapid Assessment of Marine Pollution and public health risk

In a broad sense RAMP involves an integrated application of both chemical and biological indicators. Data are used in an evidence-based approach to rank the relative impact of anthropogenic pollutants at sites within a region. RAMP contributes directly, significantly and cost-effectively to an identification of system stress (and the source of that stress). When linked to a working understanding of human activities and coastal resource use it can provide essential information on how best to

RAMP: A tiered approach

Benefit values, when linked to available and emerging measurement methods, establish a three-tiered approach to RAMP. In essence, a RAMP-based effort can provide essential information along a level-of-analysis dimension. First, in areas of the coast where little is known, they can help to identify areas of biological distress as well as the areas that appear to be functioning well (Depledge, 1994, Depledge and Fossi, 1994). In so doing, they can inform the responsible decision makers and

Statistical analysis of RAMP data

New statistical procedures developed in Plymouth, UK, (the PRIMER package) allow data collected from a given site to be inputed into a multi-dimensional scaling statistical program to facilitate detection of pollution gradients and the identification of sites with similar characteristics (see Astley et al., 1999).

Originally, the software package was developed to analyze complex ecological data concerning species diversity and abundance. However, it has since been modified for data obtained by

RASE: Rapid Assessment of Socio-Economic Indicators

If the full value of RAMP is to be realized its linkages to human dynamics must be understood. This requires a linking framework and a set of approaches designed to achieve the same goals as RAMP (fast, reliable, inexpensive, easy-to-use, and sustainable). Three areas of data acquisition and management hold the greatest promise in meeting such goals.

  • A largely unconnected, web-available data environment, describing appropriate human dimensions at appropriate, if not useful, scales exists.

  • The

The future: Virtual marine ecosystems and communities

The data gathered by procedures described above cannot only provide the basis for setting priorities, they can also be used to build and “ground truth” models. This kind of approach offers exciting new opportunities for managing coastal environments in developing countries. In recent years, the advent of aircraft based systems (e.g., LIDAR, CASI, Astin and Kiemle, 2003, Shanmugam et al., 2003) allows information concerning topography and bathymetry to be gathered quite easily. Of course, this

Regulation to achieve environmental improvements

The foregoing account advocates the development and use of pragmatic tools for assessment of environmental and human health. Integration of data obtained through the use of models and scenario evaluation will help managers to understand factors that lead to environmental degradation and health threats. However, mechanisms for mitigating stress must then be deployed to achieve favorable environmental outcomes. It is at this stage in the management cycle that many programmes designed to assist

Summary and conclusions

We have outlined the problems facing managers of the coastal environment. Clear threats exist to marine ecosystems and human communities, and these will inevitably become increasingly severe in coming years. Currently, financial resources and the lack of availability of suitably qualified personnel limit the mitigation measures that can be put in place. We have identified pragmatic, easy to use methodologies (RAMP and RASEI) that can be usefully employed to prioritize locations where detailed

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