A holistic view of aquatic ecosystems: Integrating health and integrity, network, stability, and regime shift assessments

Aquatic ecosystems, especially freshwater ecosystems, are facing increasing anthropogenic disturbances, highlighting the urgency for accurate ecosystem assessment for informed decision-making and effective management. While ecosystem health and integrity assessments have been widely applied, they often focus on ecosystem elements, overlooking their interconnections and dynamic characteristics. Establishing an integrated ecosystem assessment framework is vital to apply a comprehensive perspective in evaluations. In the current paper, a systematic review of aquatic ecosystem assessment methods is done, encompassing health and integrity assessment, network analysis, and stability and regime shift assessment. These approaches consider not only the individual elements but also the complex interconnections and dynamic characteristics within the ecosystem, which have been rarely studied due to limitations in field data availability. A case study of Poyang Lake is further presented for practical demonstration on the specific operation of the combined assessments. The integration of aquatic ecosystem assessment with ecological modeling is strongly advocated because it not only helps overcome the limitations of field data for assessing historical or current conditions, but it also enables prediction of future developments.