Project Title
Salmon,
Seabirds, and Seals: Ecological Complexity and Climate Change
Structure Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Dynamics
Proposal
Summary
The North Pacific Research Board's Integrated Ecosystem Research
Program in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) addresses the overarching
question: "How do environmental and anthropogenic processes,
including climate change, affect various trophic levels and
dynamic linkages among trophic levels, with particular emphasis
on fish and fisheries, marine mammals and seabirds within the
Gulf of Alaska?" Proposed work addresses the upper trophic
level component of this Program. Pacific salmon are the most
economically, ecologically, and culturally important species of
fish in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). Our goal is to determine and
quantify processes driving ocean production (biomass) of Pacific
salmon, seabirds and fur seals. We hypothesize that atmospheric
and oceanic circulation drives winter carrying capacity of
salmon and trophically-linked species in the GOA through
density-dependent processes, which in turn drive salmonid
brood-year strength/recruitment, seabird community structure,
and fur seal population dynamics. A suite of approaches will be
used to investigate this premise, including wintertime surveys
of salmonids, seabirds, and seals and their food webs, process
studies on population, community, and habitat structure, and
retrospective and comparative analyses with existing datasets.
Modeling will be used to experimentally explore how ocean
ecosystem processes, management scenarios, and conservation
issues (including climate change) can affect ecosystem
dynamics. This integrated ecosystem approach will provide
managers and policy makers with new decision-support tools to
plan for the future. The proposed work involves collaboration
by an international team of university, governments, and
private-sector scientists.
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