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Modelling food web interactions, variation in plankton production, and fisheries in the western English Channel ecosystem

Modelling food web interactions, variation in plankton production, and fisheries in the western English Channel ecosystem
Modelling food web interactions, variation in plankton production, and fisheries in the western English Channel ecosystem
To explore the contributions that fishing, trophic interactions and plankton production make to explanations of the observed variation of higher trophic (principally fish) levels in the western English Channel ecosystem, Ecosim simulations were run from 1973 to 1999 using the most complete data set yet assembled. The results indicate that a bottom-up mechanism plays an important role in the system production. Inclusion of a primary producer biomass forcing term, estimated from empirical data, improved the goodness of fit of the model estimates to the available biomass data by about 25% compared to fitting using only the series of fishing mortalities. Model fitting was further improved by changing the so-called vulnerability parameters, causing an overall improvement of 62% in explained variation. Incorporating the new vulnerability values, the model was used to estimate a primary production anomaly function to replace the primary producer biomass forcing in driving the model simulations. In this scenario, the model estimated a series of values for primary producer abundance that approximated the empirical data, but gave lower estimates than were observed towards the end of the period. This version also gave a better fitting to the zooplankton abundance data and generally improved the fitting to all functional groups.
Ecopath, Climate change, Ecosystem approach, English Channel
175-187
Araújo, Júlio N.
312ce317-6e30-4bd5-8b47-73b7288b8cd1
Mackinson, Steve
a016f1de-73dd-4516-ac68-7e428306c840
Stanford, Richard J.
b0c03d01-eb25-4d18-9e04-012cb18c9d7c
Sims, David W.
31af9daa-3709-4aeb-8761-976ee9fbad5f
Southward, Alan J.
b218af99-0672-45d5-a014-7f44eba261b0
Hawkins, Stephen J.
758fe1c1-30cd-4ed1-bb65-2471dc7c11fa
Ellis, Jim R.
15da750d-07f3-44c5-97a0-805a7c4e97d1
Hart, Paul J.B.
43359d3c-f4f8-44de-99fd-d1809808f0e5
Araújo, Júlio N.
312ce317-6e30-4bd5-8b47-73b7288b8cd1
Mackinson, Steve
a016f1de-73dd-4516-ac68-7e428306c840
Stanford, Richard J.
b0c03d01-eb25-4d18-9e04-012cb18c9d7c
Sims, David W.
31af9daa-3709-4aeb-8761-976ee9fbad5f
Southward, Alan J.
b218af99-0672-45d5-a014-7f44eba261b0
Hawkins, Stephen J.
758fe1c1-30cd-4ed1-bb65-2471dc7c11fa
Ellis, Jim R.
15da750d-07f3-44c5-97a0-805a7c4e97d1
Hart, Paul J.B.
43359d3c-f4f8-44de-99fd-d1809808f0e5

Araújo, Júlio N., Mackinson, Steve, Stanford, Richard J., Sims, David W., Southward, Alan J., Hawkins, Stephen J., Ellis, Jim R. and Hart, Paul J.B. (2006) Modelling food web interactions, variation in plankton production, and fisheries in the western English Channel ecosystem. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 309, 175-187. (doi:10.3354/meps).

Record type: Article

Abstract

To explore the contributions that fishing, trophic interactions and plankton production make to explanations of the observed variation of higher trophic (principally fish) levels in the western English Channel ecosystem, Ecosim simulations were run from 1973 to 1999 using the most complete data set yet assembled. The results indicate that a bottom-up mechanism plays an important role in the system production. Inclusion of a primary producer biomass forcing term, estimated from empirical data, improved the goodness of fit of the model estimates to the available biomass data by about 25% compared to fitting using only the series of fishing mortalities. Model fitting was further improved by changing the so-called vulnerability parameters, causing an overall improvement of 62% in explained variation. Incorporating the new vulnerability values, the model was used to estimate a primary production anomaly function to replace the primary producer biomass forcing in driving the model simulations. In this scenario, the model estimated a series of values for primary producer abundance that approximated the empirical data, but gave lower estimates than were observed towards the end of the period. This version also gave a better fitting to the zooplankton abundance data and generally improved the fitting to all functional groups.

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More information

Published date: 15 March 2006
Keywords: Ecopath, Climate change, Ecosystem approach, English Channel
Organisations: Ocean and Earth Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 188147
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/188147
PURE UUID: 9a29c2d4-345b-4de9-923d-281d995b301e

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Date deposited: 20 May 2011 13:04
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 03:30

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Contributors

Author: Júlio N. Araújo
Author: Steve Mackinson
Author: Richard J. Stanford
Author: David W. Sims
Author: Alan J. Southward
Author: Jim R. Ellis
Author: Paul J.B. Hart

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