Assessing ecosystem states quantitatively or qualitatively is important for ecosystem management. Currently, Traditional Comprehensive Assessment (TCA), including ecosystem health, risk, and service assessment is used most often. Ecosystem stability theory (EST) and ecosystem regime shift theory (RST) from mathematical ecology have not been widely used. In this paper, we compare TCA and EST and RST result using two lakes, Onondaga Lake and Poyang Lake, as case studies. We find that biological oxygen demand (BOD) could be a suitable variable to calculate temporal stability and variance indexes in EST and RST, and trend in general. The result could replace TCA when the key lake driver is not too extreme. This recommendation is preliminary, needing validated with data.

定量或定性评估生态系统状态对于生态系统管理很重要。当前，最常用的是传统综合评估（TCA），包括生态系统健康，风险和服务评估。数学生态学中的生态系统稳定性理论（EST）和生态系统状态转移理论（RST）尚未得到广泛应用。在本文中，我们以奥内达加湖和Po阳湖这两个湖泊为例，比较了TCA和EST以及RST的结果。我们发现，生物需氧量（BOD）可能是计算EST和RST的时间稳定性和方差指标以及总体趋势的合适变量。当关键的湖边驱动程序不太极端时，结果可以代替TCA。该建议是初步的，需要经过数据验证。