Evaluating network analysis indicators of ecosystem status in the GULF OF ALASKA

• Main Authors: Johanna Jacomina Heymans, Villy Christensen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Gulf of Alaska; Pacific; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.962.1370; http://www.marinemammal.org/wp-content/pdfs/Heymans%20et%20al%202007.pdf

This is the first study on the emergent properties for empirical ecosystem models that have been validated by time series information. Ecosystem models of the western and central Aleutian Islands and Southeast Alaska were used to examine indices of ecosystem status generated from net-work analysis and incorporated into Ecopath with Ecosim. Dynamic simulations of the two ecosystems over the past 40 years were employed to examine if these indices reflect the dissimilar changes that occurred in the ecosystems. The results showed that the total systems throughput (TST) and ascendancy (A) followed the climate change signature (Pacific decadal oscillation, PDO)