ECOSYSTEM STATUS REPORT

With the aim of supporting Ecosystem-Based Management, the Gulf of Mexico NOAA Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program seeks to provide scientific knowledge of the Gulf of Mexico integrated ecosystem, and transfer that knowledge to scientists and managers.

To provide a broad overview of the current state of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), with respect to recent and historical trends. Management of the GoM Large Marine Ecosystem is a challenging task, not only due to the wide range of anthropogenic impacts affecting the ecosystem, but also because of the range of services extracted from the ecosystem and the diverse user groups with numerous and sometimes conflicting objectives. Monitoring the ecosystem state is accomplished through the development of indicators, which are specific, well-defined and measurable variables that have been proven to reflect the status of some component of the ecosystem. A suite of indicators was developed to represent key components f the GoM, and are presented in this report. To aid in the selection of appropriate indicators, a conceptual modeling framework is used to identify focal ecosystem components. The

conceptual framework, as well as other statistical considerations and criteria used to select ndicators presented in this report, are described below. This is the first Update Report for the Gulf of Mexico, and builds on the original Ecosystem Status Report for the Gulf of Mexico published in 2013 [1]. The Ecosystem Status Reports are compiled by NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico

Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program, in collaboration with academic partners, conservation organizations, and other government and state agencies.

This report should be cited as follows:

Karnauskas, M., Kelble, C. R., Regan, S., Quenée, C., Allee, R., Jepson, M., Freitag, A., Craig, J. K., Carollo, C., Barbero, L., Trifonova, N., Hanisko, D., Zapfe, G. 2017. 2017 Ecosystem status report update for the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-SEFSC-706, 51 p.

This website contains descriptions of the indicators and their data sources, for a subset of the data. The report, also embedded within the website, contains a full description for all of the data.