Sustaining Europe's seas as coupled social-ecological systems.

The article presents a study which described an ecosystem approach in understanding the marine social-ecological system within the framework of the European Union (EU)-funded project Knowledge-Based Sustainable Management of Europe's Seas (KnowSeas). The approach is based on several ecology-based concepts including the Driver Pressure State Welfare Response (DPSWR) framework, environmental decision-making based on nonlinear models, and non-matching spatial and temporal scales.