Standard Presentation (12 minutes) Australian Marine Sciences Association 2025 Conference

Towards a National Marine Natural Values Assessment System for Australia (120637)

Rowan Trebilco 1 2 , Piers Dunstan 1 , Skip Woolley 1 , Beth Fulton 1 2 , Tim Langlois 3 , Jacquomo Monk 4 , Dave Logan 5 , Ben Sellers 5 , Cath Samson 5 , Steffan Howe 5
  1. CSIRO Environment, Hobart, TAS, Australia
  2. Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia
  3. Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia
  4. Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia
  5. Parks Australia, Kingston, TAS, Australia

Assessments of the state and trend of marine natural values are a cross-cutting need for the agencies that manage Australia’s marine environment. There are numerous inter-related assessment and reporting frameworks, with topical current national-scale examples including State of the Environment (SoE) reporting, Ocean Accounts, Methods for the Nature Repair Market, and Australian Marine Parks (AMPs) Management Effectiveness (ME). While these initiatives share common goals in evaluating marine natural values, a lack of consistency and coherence between approaches has been a long-standing source of inefficiencies and challenges in comparing results across programs.

The Natural Values Common Language (NVCL), developed for the Parks Australia’s AMP ME system, provides the basis for a nationally consistent, coherent and scalable approach that can deliver to multiple needs.

The NVCL has already been successfully adopted in the most recent marine SoE report, the National Climate Risk Assessment, and as the primary data source for marine ecosystem extent for national Ecosystem Accounts. Current work extends the NVCL to create a consistent approach for assessing and tracking ecosystem state, incorporating both ecosystem models and monitoring observations. This presentation will outline the NVCL framework and its applications, demonstrating its potential for standardizing marine natural values assessment across Australia.