Dear MARMAM community, please find a new publication on how to integrate assessment outcomes as required under some conservation instruments such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive of the European Union. The publication has a case study on marine mammals, building on the work of the OSPAR Quality Status Report of 2023. Title: Integration of indicator outcomes for assessing good environmental status: A model-based approach Abstract: Integrated assessments are required to track ecosystem status, any change thereof and progress due to conservation measures. The European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which aims among others at maintaining biodiversity, requires regular quantitative assessments built from monitoring data and indicator developments to decide on the environmental status of each element in a marine ecosystem. Beyond the daunting tasks incurred with large-scale monitoring and timely analyses, collapsing the multivariate information from indicators on several species into a single number reflecting an overall environmental status is the challenge associated with integration. The ‘One Out, All Out’ (OOAO) integration rule is currently in use in part due its simplicity and ease of use. Its main drawback is its built-in sensitivity to error in binary assessment outcomes: statistical noise will dominate integration with an increasing number of species or indicators. We developed a model-based approach to integration for MSFD assessments within the statistical framework of Signal Detection Theory. We benchmarked the model performance against the OOAO integration rule in a simulation study. The model-based integration scheme redresses known deficiencies with the OOAO rule and clarifies statistical assumptions behind integration rules, unifying them across a continuum. We illustrated our approach with a case study on the ecosystem component ’marine mammals’ in the Northeast Atlantic. We believe our model-based approach provides a more comprehensive integrated output of ecosystem assessments that aligns better with decision-making under uncertainty in evidence-based policy. Reference: Authier, M. & Gilles, A. (2025) Integration of indicator outcomes for assessing good environmental status: A model-based approach. Ecological Informatics, 92, 103502. 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103502 The full-text is available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954125005114 Cheers Matthieu -- Matthieu Authier - Ingénieur de Recherche La Rochelle Université Observatoire Pelagis UAR 3462 CNRS-LRUniv 5 allée de l'océan 17 000 La Rochelle telephone: +00 33 (0)7 77 22 32 67 (remote-working/télé-travail) https://www.observatoire-pelagis.cnrs.fr/pelagis-2/lequipe/matthieu-authier/ Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett) Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf (Deutsche Bahn) Being an academic doesn’t mean that everyone thinks you’re smart; it means that a few smart people think you’re wrong. (Thomas Basboell) 🍍 🦉🐛