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13 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables ; Trawling disturbs benthic communities, eliminating the most vulnerable organisms and modifying habitat structure. While the cumulative effects of disturbance resulting from commercial trawling activities are poorly understood, several studies suggest that chronically disturbed communities are dominated by opportunistic organisms. This study focuses on changes in functional components of the benthic community occurring in muddy sediments in a NW Mediterranean trawling ground, including an area that has not been fished for 20 yr. In both disturbed and undisturbed areas, the overall benthic community from the fishing ground was dominated by burrowing epifaunal deposit feeders and predators, and deep burrowing infaunal deposit feeders. The fished area had a higher abundance of burrowing epifaunal scavengers and motile burrowing infauna, while the undisturbed area was characterised by higher abundance of surface infauna, epifaunal suspension feeders and predatory fish. This study clearly demonstrates that changes in the functional components of a benthic community can result from fishing in areas dominated by organisms not considered especially vulnerable to trawling activities. Thus, fisheries managers aiming to reduce ecosystem disturbance must consider the implications of trawling on the structure and functioning of all types of benthic communities. ; The authors thank J. Hewitt and C. Lundquist for their helpful comments on the manuscript. This study was funded by the EU project RESPONSE (Q5RS-2002-00787). We thank the participants in the Response project, as well as all the participants in the 'Veda' cruises and the crew of the RV 'Garcia Del Cid' for their help and enthusiasm. Data were provided by the Fishermen's Association of St. Carles. S. de Juan was supported by a grant from Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat of the Catalan government to study at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), New Zealand. Comments from 3 anonymous reviewers improved the final version of the manuscript. ; Peer reviewed

9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.09.034 ; It is crucial that societies are informed on the risks of impoverished ecosystem health for their well-being. For this purpose, Ecological Integrity (EI) is a useful concept that seeks to capture the complex nature of ecosystems and their interaction with social welfare. But the challenge remains to measure EI and translate scientific terminology into operational language to inform society. We propose an approach that simplifies marine ecosystem complexity by applying scientific knowledge to identify which components reflect the state or state change of ecosystems. It follows a bottom-up structure that identifies, based on expert knowledge, biological components related with past and present changing conditions. It is structured in 5 stages that interact in an adaptive way: stage 1, in situ observations suggest changes could be happening; stage 2 explores available data that represent EI; stage 3, experts' workshops target the identification of the minimum set of variables needed to define EI, or the risk of losing EI; an optative stage 4, where deviance from EI, or risk of deviance, is statistically assessed; stage 5, findings are communicated to society. We demonstrate the framework effectiveness in three case studies, including a data poor situation, an area where lack of reference sites hampers the identification of historical changes, and an area where diffuse sources of stress make it difficult to identify simple relationships with of ecological responses. The future challenge is to operationalise the approach and trigger desirable society actions to strengthen a social-nature link ; Funding for JH was provided by NIWA Coasts and Oceans Centre (MBIE CORE). SdJ was funded by H2020-Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action MSCA-IF-2016 [Project ID: 743545]. MDS was funded by FONDECYT 1130580 grant and ICM grant CCM – RC130004 from Ministerio de Economía, Fomento y Turismo (Chilean Government) ; Peer Reviewed