Table 5. Comparative summary of assessment tools and methods that have been applied to regions of the US West coast.

	OHI	IEA	PSP	FEP	CalCOFI
Ecological system assessed explicitly	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
Social system assessed explicitly	no	yes	no	no	no
Integrated assessment of socio-ecological systems	yes	no	no	no	no
Scalable to sub-regional level	yes	yes	yes	no	yes
Includes scenario analyses	yes	yes	no	no	no
Part of PFMC process	no	yes	no	yes	yes
Part of WCGA process	no	yes	no	no	no
Addresses most/all sectors	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Combines all sectors into an overall quantitative assessment	yes	no	no	no	no
Reference points are explicitly delineated	yes	no	no	no	no

OHI, IEA and FEP methods have been applied to the entire west coast; PSP and CalCOFI are sub-regional assessments but are included for comparative purposes. Attributes which all or none of the methods achieve are not included in this table. See legend below for definition of acronyms.

Legend: OHI = Ocean Health Index; IEA = Integrated Ecosystem Assessment; PSP = Puget Sound Partnership; FEP = PFMC Fisheries Ecosystem Plan annual reports; PFMC = Pacific Fisheries Management Council; WCGA = West Coast Governors Agreement; CalCOFI = California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations.