Healthy marine ecosystems support healthy people and economies.
However, heath is well-defined for people, but not for ecosystems.
ES5 has developed a health assessment system for social-ecological systems inspired by holistic approaches used in human health, but fully quantitative.
Our approach enables you to design health plans for ecosystems and dependent people, economies and industries.
We can make these health assessments for complex systems because we work with the underlying processes rather than just patterns and correlations.
This helps you turn assessments into guided decisions and actions.
By helping you identify which ecosystem health elements are under your control, and which are not, plans for health improvements can be made with quantitative profiles of expected success, costs, risks and economic benefits.
Our monitoring strategies also build on this philosophy and these guidelines.
Importantly, we tailor health assessments to the environmental, ecological, social, economic and cultural setting (the 5 in ES5).
In other words, the health of the ecosystem is partly defined by how well it underpins ecosystem services and values.
The health plan recommendations we provide seek to support ecosystem services and values, not unlike how a functional, holistic doctor lays a health plan for a client.
Need a health assessment for your marine environment?