The Alaska Integrated Ecosystem Assessment team and other NOAA scientists are developing a multi-model assessment of climate change impacts on fish, food-webs, and fisheries in Alaska. This is the Alaska Climate Integrated Modeling (ACLIM) project.
Current ecosystem status reports are mostly meeting expectations of consulted council and regional office staff and are recognized as great reference, education, and communication tools. Ecosystem information contained in ecosystem status reports can be used in other products that may serve as on-ramps into the management process.
Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management are key to addressing the many different challenges we are currently facing, such as climate change, and balancing the needs of nature and society for a more sustainable future. Senior Scientist for Ecosystems at NOAA Fisheries, Jason Link, and Research Fishery Biologist with the Northeast IEA team, Sarah Gaichas, presented to a United Nations consultation.
Georges Bank is a relatively shallow (3-150 m) submarine plateau off the coast of New England in the Atlantic Ocean, forming an area larger than the state of Massachusetts (Link et al. 2005).
The Gulf of Maine forms the most northerly component of the Northeast Large Marine Ecosystem, extending northward from Georges Bank and east to Canadian waters.
The Mid-Atlantic Bight falls between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, extending westward into the Atlantic to the 100m isobath. Primary productivity is highest in the nearshore and estuarine regions, with coastal phytoplankton blooms initiating in the winter and summer, although the timing and spatial extent of blooms varies from year to year.
The Cold Pool is a key oceanographic feature in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, consisting of a band of cold near-bottom water extending between Cape Hatteras and southern Georges Bank.
Extending from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, the Northeast ecosystem is marked with a temperate climate and high productivity influenced by tidal flux, gyre circulation, cold southward flowing currents and warm eddies that spin off the northward flowing Gulf Stream. High productivity supports a biodiverse array of invertebrates, pelagic fish, groundfish, anadromous fish, seabirds and marine mammals.
Indicators were developed to represent the current status and historical trends of key components of the Gulf of America (formerly the Gulf of Mexico) marine ecosystem.
Indicators are presented in the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Status Report.
We used input from stakeholders to create a comprehensive understanding of the social-ecological system in West Hawai‘i, diagrammed in this conceptual ecosystem model. Ecosystem services are linked to complex interactions between human pressures such as habitat destruction, and ecological elements such as reef and pelagic fishes. In the model, Drivers (orange boxes) tend to be distal events that create more immediate Pressures (red boxes) which create change within an Ecosystem State Component (green boxes). Changes directly influence Impacted Ecosystem Services (purple boxes).
