This report is a deliverable of Work Package 4 (WP4 – Ecosystem models and assessment models) of the FP7 MareFrame research project. It proposes a common procedure for reporting the outputs from the different ecosystem models employed in the MareFrame project. European fisheries are managed according to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) which is designed to protect European marine ecosystem and aims at achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020. GES is defined by eleven descriptors listed in this report. The aim of the MareFrame project is to apply a minimum of two ecosystem models on various case studies across Europe in order to identify management strategies which will achieve GES. As a result there is a need within MareFrame for a common reporting procedure to (i) produce indicators relating to the descriptors of GES and (ii) produce indicators comparable between different ecosystem models. This report investigates the common indicators related to the GES descriptors that can be derived from all different models considered in MareFrame in order to assess management strategies in regard of these descriptors. The six different ecosystem models to be used in MareFrame, described in this report, vary greatly from length-based (FishSUMS, Gadget, Simple Size Based Model) to age-based (Simplified Summary Model) and foodweb models (Ecopath with Ecosim, Atlantis). However, all six models return biomass and landings for each commercial species, from which it is possible to derive a variety of ecosystem indicators. A list of fourteen ecosystem indicators is proposed here. These indicators can be employed to assess the performance of management strategies simulated with different ecosystem models. To facilitate the comparison between ecosystem models it is suggested that, for each model, the value reached at the end of the simulation for each indicator should be reported in a summary table. To compare the variation in indicators across time, their values should also be displayed on traffic light plots, as exemplified in this report. On top of the procedure for displaying results proposed here, this report also suggests a common structure to follow when writing ecosystem model reports.
