The Concept of Information Support for Bi-oresource and Ecosystem Research in the North-West Pacific: Theory and Practical Implementation

Abstract

The first part of the article provides an overview of the theoretical evidence, the main provisions, and the implementation strategy of information support for bioresource and ecosystem research in the north-west Pacific, which has been conducted over the past 20 years in the Russian Far East Research Institute TINRO-Center. In short, the concept consists of a combination of the following four assertions: 1) For the steady and sustainable development of the Russian Far East, the entire Russian Federation and the Asia-Pacific Region in general, environmental, food, economic, and other security is required, which cannot be achieved without the rational use of bioresources based on the ecosystem approach to the management of aquatic bioresources. 2) For the inventory, appraisal, monitoring, forecasting of the state of and management the natural water resources when applying this approach, statistically relevant quantitative information is required on the greatest possible number of constituents of marine biocenosis of the north-western Pacific for the longest possible period of time, which is only available at the TINRO-Center. 3) This valuable data should be organized into databases, based on which geo-information and other electronic information systems are prepared, and based on these map atlases and reference books on natural water resources, using automated workplaces created especially for this. 4) The resulting unique information support will be of great value not only for practical purposes, but also for science, both applied and fundamental. Next comes a summary of the many years of work on the practical implementation of this concept and the key achievements in this field obtained by the TINRO-Center by the end of 2015 are reviewed. At the end, some plans for the near future are outlined.