Ecological forecasting under climate change: the case of Baltic cod.
Good decision making for fisheries and marine ecosystems requires a capacity to anticipate the consequences of management under different scenarios of climate change. The necessary ecological forecasting calls for ecosystem-based models capable of integrating multiple drivers across trophic levels and properly including uncertainty. The methodology presented here assesses the combined impacts of climate and fishing on marine food-web dynamics and provides estimates of the confidence envelope of the forecasts. It is applied to cod (Gadus morhua) in the Baltic Sea, which is vulnerable to climate-related decline in salinity owing to both direct and indirect effects (i.e. through species interactions) on early-life survival. A stochastic food web-model driven by regional climate scenarios is used to produce quantitative forecasts of cod dynamics in the twenty-first century. The forecasts show how exploitation would have to be adjusted in order to achieve sustainable management under different climate scenarios.
Lindegren
Martin
M
National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark, Charlottenlund Castle, 2920 Charlottenlund, Denmark.
Möllmann
Christian
C
Nielsen
Anders
A
Brander
Keith
K
MacKenzie
Brian R
BR
Stenseth
Nils Chr
NC
D000818:Animals; D001454:Baltic States; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D005398:Fisheries / Q000379:methods*; D020387:Food Chain; D005544:Forecasting / Q000379:methods; D048389:Gadus morhua / Q000254:growth & development*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D011157:Population Dynamics; D018570:Risk Assessment