• Guidance

Calculating ecological response footprints

This guidance uses stressors and seabed ecosystem characteristics to determine the relationship between stressor and ecological response footprints (June 2024)

An ecological response footprint is made up of size and depth, and assessment of an ERF should consider the following two questions:

  • Is the response footprint the same size, larger, smaller, patchy, or divorced from the stressor footprints?
  • Is the response footprint proportionally the same depth (magnitude and duration) as the stressor footprints?

It’s not necessary to have calculated the present ecological response footprint – that’s considered in Table 1 of An ecological principles-based approach to guide coastal environmental management.