Ecological integrity assessment, ecosystem-based approach, and integrative methodologies: Are these concepts equivalent?

Recently, Borja et al. (2008b) published an overview of integrationing and status of the ecosystem, and have been widely pertive tools and methods for assessing ecological integrity in estuarine and coastal systems worldwide. This contribution collates the presentations and ideas debated among the attendees of the special session on ‘Integrative tools and methods in assessing ecological integrity in estuarine and coastal systems’, organised by two of the co-authors at the ‘EcoSummit 2007 – Ecological Complexity and Sustainability’ conference in Beijing (China), in May 2007. Chapman (2009) commented that he was surprised by the omission of several well-established, integrative techniques, such as Sediment Quality Triad (SQT), Weight-of-Evidence (WOE), and Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA). Is this really an omission, or simply, are we talking about different issues? When discussing integrative tools and methods in assessing ecological integrity, we were aware of the different meanings of the terms ‘integrative methodologies’ and ‘ecological integrity’. Indeed, the lack of a coherent terminology to differentiate the various assessment types and the diverse nature of aquatic environmental assessments is currently being discussed (Morishita, 2008; Foden et al., 2008). Marine and estuarine environments are facing increasing and significant impacts, which include physical and chemical transformation, habitat destruction and changes in biodiversity (Halpern et al., 2007, 2008a,b). Causes include land reclamation, dredging, pollution (sediment discharges, hazardous substances, litter, oilspills, eutrophication, etc.), unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (sand extraction, oil and gas exploitation, fishing, etc.), unmanaged tourism, introduction of alien species and climate change (see Halpern et al. (2007)). To manage these pressures and impacts on marine environments, recent legislative instruments approved worldwide address the need to assess their ecological status. The concept of environmental or ecological status takes into account the structure, function and processes of marine ecosystems bringing together natural physical, chemical, physiographic, geographic and climatic factors, and integrates these conditions with the anthropogenic impacts and human activities in the area concerned. As commented in Borja et al. (2008b), the above concept defines quality in an integrative way, by using several biological parameters (from phytoplankton to mammals) together with physico-chemical and pollution elements. In a recent paper, Rogers et al. (2007) review the selection of the ecosystem components, adding to the abovementioned structural components other ecosystem attributes such as food web dynamics, species diversity, and the distribution of life histories, that are not direct biological properties but functions of the entire ecosystem. They are important because they provide information about the func-