Predicting Trophic Interactions and Habitat Utilization in the California Current Ecosystem

• Main Authors: Fiechter, Jerome, Costa, Daniel P, Rose, Kenneth A, Curchister, Enrique, Hedstrom, Katherine, Edwards, Christopher, Moore, Andrew
• Other Authors: CALIFORNIA UNIV SANTA CRUZ
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Biological Oceanography; *CETACEA; *HABITATS; CALIFORNIA; CONTINENTAL SHELVES; ECOSYSTEMS; FEEDING; OCEAN ENVIRONMENTS; OFFSHORE; PACIFIC OCEAN; PERIODIC VARIATIONS; SEA LIONS; Pacific; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA573476; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA573476

While specifically focusing on trophic interactions affecting habitat utilization and foraging pattern of sea lions in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME), the long-term goal of our modeling approach is to better understand and characterize biological hotspots (i.e., the aggregation of multiple marine organisms over multiple trophic levels) off the U.S. west coast and in other regions where similar fully-coupled ecosystem models may be implemented (e.g., Southern Ocean). As such, our research represents a major step towards a predictive model that can provide fundamental knowledge about: (1) the spatial and temporal distribution of key marine organisms over multiple trophic levels, and (2) natural and anthropogenic variability in ecosystem structure and trophic interactions.