A Closed-Loop Simulation Model For In-season Management of Kuskokwim River Chinook Salmon, Tailored for a Value of Information Analysis and informed by Data Spanning 1984-2016

• Main Author: Staton, Ben
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: KNB Data Repository 2018
• Subjects: harvest; governance; featured; community monitoring; Pacific; Kuskokwim; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5063/f17m0660; https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/view/doi:10.5063/F17M0660

In-season harvest management in large-scale subsistence fisheries for Pacific salmon is often conducted in the face of poor information (both quality and quantity). Before deciding which information sources to invest in generating or improving, it is prudent to first evaluate which will provide the greatest gains in management performance, and in which cases. We created a closed-loop simulation model to evaluate the Value of Information of various data sources for decision-making regarding in-season harvest management in the Kuskokwim River, Alaska. The information sources we evaluated were (1) improved pre-season forecasts of run size, (2) in-season abundance index data, and (3) in-season harvest estimates. The model contains submodels for the true system dynamics (i.e., the spatiotemporal aspects of the fish and fishers), observed dynamics (i.e., assessment), and management based on assessment information (i.e., weekly decisions about how much fishing to allow). The software package included here includes all model code to specify and run the analysis, as well as all data used to parameterize the model (biological information like run timing, species composition, telemetry data and sociological information like the number of fishing households in each village and the amount of harvest by species taken by each village). The file InSeason_VOI_Model.zip is a zipped directory including all of the code and data. The data used to parameterize the model is also included separately as individual files to more clearly describe their contents. These data were originally sourced from Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports (see methods section for details).