The transition to Ecosystem Based Management necessitates a suite of socio-ecological models and approaches to explore uncertainty around transition periods and trade-offs across all social and ecological objectives. However, there is still much to be learned in developing these interdisciplinary models. This session explores best practices in socio-ecological modelling from approaches spanning agent-based modelling, scenario development and analysis, integrated ecosystem assessments, and broader qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques. Particular focus will be placed on context-appropriate methods of integrating social objectives and knowledge systems (including economics), governance processes, system uncertainty, and behavioral heterogeneity into coupled models. The role of each approach, or alternately a suite of techniques, in developing management advice will be explored.

The session will look to answer questions including:

• What are the recent advances and key challenges in assessing deep uncertainty for ocean and coastal systems through approaches such as scenario development?
• How have social indicators been integrated into the management process given the spatial and temporal scale challenges of social data?
• How can approaches such as agent-based modelling, which account for individual heterogeneity but are likely to be capacity-constrained, be effectively used in assessing multi-sector trade-offs?
• How can governance processes best be incorporated in models of marine socio-ecological systems?
• What roles can qualitative and quantitative modelling play in generating management advice, and what are best practices with respect to communicating their combined outputs to stakeholders and managers?
• Given the importance of stakeholder participation and knowledge in fostering trust in management, what are best practices in engaging these individuals formally in modelling endeavors?

Delivering research that is valuable for policy-making requires expanded interdisciplinary efforts to support governance. This theme session explores paths to better include the human dimension in marine research and governance. The topics will be organized in two complementary streams: 1) how to do interdisciplinary science to manage marine social-ecological systems; 2) how to utilize different approaches to the governance of marine social-ecological systems, including competing uses by multiple sectors of interconnected ecosystems components.

We welcome papers on methodological approaches, conceptual frameworks, comparative analyses, case studies, and critical reviews intended to advance a roadmap for effective collaboration and management-relevant research.

Ensuring sustainable use and development of the world’s oceans is of global significance due to the recognition of its importance to address key global challenges and the ocean’s importance to humankind in many ways. To ensure future sustainability, it is necessary to focus on what has been achieved, where we are going, and what challenges we will face including the role that local, national, regional and global actors play. This session will examine factors and perspectives for sustainable ocean use and development including the lessons learned from the past to inform the future. Sub-sessions will focus on the intersection between sustainable use and biodiversity conservation in the context of global agreements, community involvement, user rights, and the equitable distribution of capital, resources and returns.

Integrated actions are needed to address the many pressures impacting marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. Resource managers are increasingly required to assess the cumulative risk of these pressures; however, public perception of risk often deviates from technical assessments. Managers thus face a dilemma: if they base their policies on technical assessments alone, they may lose public support; if they use only the perceptions as guidance, they may spend resources dedicated to risk reduction unwisely. Our highly interactive session will explore risk and vulnerability assessment, perception, and management across a range of topics including climate, habitat, and fishing communities, among others.

Marine social-ecological systems encompass benefits to society that are often spatially managed. As scientists develop spatial analyses of marine ecosystems and associated benefits, the demand for diverse data that reflect human dimensions expands, alongside the emphasis on integration of social-cultural, economic, and governance data with the more commonly collected ecological data. We highlight 1) the intersection of spatial approaches and social-cultural,economic, and governance data in decision making frameworks such as integrated ecosystem assessments, 2) describe their integration with ecological data, 3) outline and address challenges in human dimensions data collection and integration, and 4) provide dialogue opportunities on future spatial marine research and policy efforts.

Marine Ecosystem Services (MES) which link ecosystem state and human well-being are one of the most important languages of social-ecological systems thinking. In theory, MES are a vital component of Ecosystem-Based Management underpinning sustainable Blue Economic growth. In practice, large-scale assessment of ecosystem services concepts in sea and ocean are generally limited to the supply side and critically, lack consideration of human demand. This is particularly true for cultural and regulating services. This session, therefore, welcomes quantitative and qualitative contributions from any discipline which help to incorporate ecosystem services into marine governance and regional economic development. In particular, we encourage the utilization of some boundary objects (maps, games, etc.) which can contribute to the visualization of ecosystem services from both demand and supply sides.

Complexity in marine social-ecological systems presents challenges for achieving balance between ecological sustainability and the needs and desires of resource users. Inter- and transdisciplinary research methods provide the opportunity to integrate diverse perspectives and to engage stakeholders to foment the co-production of knowledge and visions to inform decision-making. This session provides case studies of innovative use of interdisciplinary and participatory methods, applied at various scales to inform fisheries and other global ecosystem challenges. We seek to understand best practices in converting co-production of knowledge to management relevance. A panel will discuss the lessons learned for the design of SES projects and for the sustainability of marine ecosystems.

Assessing the overall status or trends of biodiversity and ecosystems is increasingly required as part of reporting progress towards national and international policy goals. Such assessments often require the integration of indicators across multiple biodiversity features and can cover the effects from a range of human activities for large areas of ocean. The evidence used in these assessments may be collected at different geographic scales and come from multiple knowledge systems. This session welcomes presentations on qualitative and quantitative multi-scale approaches to biodiversity ecosystem assessments, including indicator development, integration methods, available tools and resources and baseline and target setting approaches, and how they can be used to assess ecosystem services and improve conservation measures.

Coastal communities are located at the cusp in multiple senses. Emerging conditions for coastal communities are being shaped by the changing interaction of land and sea systems, sectors and climate-driven impacts, as well as by shifting social factors and axes of contestation and inequity concerning tenure and coastal zone use, human development and food security, and concerning social collectives and forms of community. Applying a “lens” of coastal communities, this session will use presentations and facilitated discussions to explore the changing conditions being experienced by coastal communities and the responding changes in our knowledge and science capacity to understand what’s happening. This session welcomes presentations on emerging conditions and transformations for coastal communities and on the role for supporting science and assessment. Specifically, topics may include: change of land use in coastal zones and its impact on socio-ecological systems; changing coastal values and preferences, and implications for trade-offs, cooperation and conflict in the coastal zone; responses to changing climate and the changing nature of poverty and food insecurity in coastal communities; and, monitoring change in ocean uses, with coastal communities as units of analysis in multi-sectoral integrated assessment.

Marine systems are vulnerable to environmental changes, such as intensifying climate change, deoxygenation and acidification. At the same time, the oceans are subject to increasing human pressures, such as exploitation of living, fossil and mineral resources, industrialization and pollution of the ocean. The combined impacts of these pressures can have severe consequences for marine organisms, ecosystem services and their users, hence challenging the resilience of socio-ecological systems (SES). When the adaptive capacities of marine ecosystems or user groups and communities are exceeded, unexpected thresholds and tipping points may be reached.

We invite case studies, regardless of their spatial scale, scope and governance settings, and methodologies that address the responses to environmental or anthropogenic drivers, and/or users’ adaptive capacities in SES. By improving understanding of the vulnerability to multiple drivers, we aim to identify adaptive governance strategies that can strengthen the resilience of marine-human systems under global change.