Resumen del producto

¹ Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas

Based on Ulanowicz’s (Growth and development: ecosystems phenomenology. Springer, 1986) theory, exposed in Chap. 3, several holistic indicators of the ecosystem are explored for their potential use for fisheries management or contingencies due to loss of biomass. The use of the self-organization capacity index is illustrated with an example from the southern Gulf of Mexico. Also, the relationship between connectivity and the role of species in the ecosystem is discussed and is used to illustrate the definition of the window of vitality, which represents the limits of the sustainability of the ecosystem, being exemplified with the ecosystem of the Northern Gulf of California. Both indicators, self-organization capacity and window of vitality, show that a similar condition of sustainability, estimated through holistic attributes, can be found (assessed) for an ecosystem under different organization and functioning states. The understanding of this concept is relevant for management purposes since it implies different sustainability states for an ecosystem in terms of organization and function. On the other hand, the relationship between Ascendency and Overhead is used to describe the concept of ecosystem health, which is exemplified, by simulation, through the loss of biomass on different species with different life histories of the ecosystem of the southern Gulf of Mexico. For the same example, the use of an indicator of ecosystem vulnerability is shown.

Palabras clave: Holistic indicator; window of vitality; Ecosystem sustainability; ecosystem health; Ecosystem vulnerability; ecosystem reference points; Organization-entropy balance; Magdalena Bay; Northern Gulf of California

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