"Globally, people and ecosystem services are concentrated in the coastal zone where the health of marine ecosystems is most at risk to perturbations from a broad spectrum of convergent anthropogenic pressures. In this context, the rationale for an analysis such as this is to provide information needed to inform EBAs designed to maintain or restore coastal ecosystems services (metrics of ecosystem health). For marine ecosystems, these include provisioning services (e.g., seafood supply, pharmaceuticals), regulating services (e.g., water quality, resilience to coastal erosion and storm surge, carbon sequestration), cultural services (e.g., recreation and ecotourism) and support services, (e.g., biodiversity, viability and extent of biologically structured coastal habitats, primary production, carbon pumps). Our intent here is to advance the understanding and predictive skill of changes in the status of marine ecosystems (as indicated by changes in selected ecosystem services)"-- |