Did you realize that humans are animals too?
Beth Fulton
CSIRO Marine and Atmopsheric Research
Marine ecosystem modelling has existed since the 1970s, although it has only been in the last 10-15 years that it has begun to see wide spread use. That cumulative experience has begun to shape understanding of general patterns of behaviour across ecosystems. It has also highlighted a few "you must remember…" points to include on model making checklists. These include (i) the role of environmental drivers, (ii) ecological idiosyncrasies of individual ecosystems and (iii) not to neglect the human drivers of the system. This reinforces a rule of thumb that became evident in ecosystem (and then end-to-end modelling) at least a decade ago - take at least one step back from what you're focused on and check to see if you're missing anything (i.e. interacting processes across other scales). In the context of using end-to-end as management advice tools this drives home the importance of not forgetting the human parts of the system