Ecological assessment consists in monitoring the current and changing conditions of ecological resources from which success or failure of the ecosystem can be judged without bias; understanding more fully the structure and function of ecosystems in order to develop improved management options; developing models to predict the response of ecosystems to changes resulting from human-induced stress from which possible ecosystem management strategies can be assessed and assessing the ecological consequences of management actions so that decisionmakers can best understand the outcomes of choosing a particular management strategy.