Thank you funders, open-source developers, data providers!
Pacific Life Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Contact us about OHI+ assessments
Julie Lowndes: lowndes@nceas.ucsb.edu
Ning Mendes: mendes@nceas.ucsb.edu
Erich Pacheco: epacheco@conservation.org

- Halpern et al. 2012, Nature. An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean.
- Halpern et al. 2015, PLoS ONE. Patterns and emerging trends in global ocean health.
- Halpern et al. 2014, PLoS ONE. Assessing the health of the U.S. West Coast with a regional-scale application of the OHI.
- Elfes et al. 2014, PLoS ONE. A regional-scale OHI for Brazil.
- Selig et al. 2015, Ecosystem Services. Measuring indicators of ocean health for an island nation: The OHI for Fiji.
- Halpern et al. 2008, Science. A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems.
- Halpern et al. 2015, Nature Communications. Spatial and temporal changes in cumulative human impacts on the world's ocean.
- Lowndes et al. in revision. Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks

The Ocean Health Index (OHI) is a framework to assess the state of our marine systems. With a definition of 'healthy' that includes sustainable human use, the OHI scores locations from 0-100 depending on how sustainably their waters provide a suite of benefits to people. The OHI framework was first used to assess all coastal nations globally, and was published in 2012 (Halpern et al. 2012, Nature).

Following the 2012 publication, the OHI framework has been used to assess smaller-scale locations, most often states or provinces within a single nation. These smaller spatial scales often have information that better represents local characteristics of marine systems and are also often the scale at which policy decisions are made.

To date, eleven assessments using the OHI framework have been completed at global, national, and regional scales, four of which have been led by independent academic or government groups. To facilitate these assessments, we have developed a suite of open-source tools and instruction. The OHI Toolbox provides structure for data organization and storage, with data processing and goal modeling done in the programming language R and RStudio for reproducibility and repeatability. The OHI Toolbox is stored on the open-source online platform GitHub, which allows for transparency and collaboration and also houses websites to display and communicate methods and results with interactive visualizations. More information can be found at ohi-science.org (currently under a major restructuring and improvement, stay tuned!).