Ecological forecasting under climate change: the case of Baltic cod

Good decision making for fisheries and marine ecosystems requires a capacity to anticipate the consequences of management under different scenarios of climate change. The necessary ecological forecasting calls for ecosystem-based models capable of integrating multiple drivers across trophic levels a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Main Authors: Lindegren, Martin, Möllmann, Christian, Nielsen, Anders, Brander, Keith, MacKenzie, Brian, Stenseth, Niels Chr.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/1f1d7d7c-bcba-4a02-8ee7-1ef74afc063f
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.0353
Description
Summary:Good decision making for fisheries and marine ecosystems requires a capacity to anticipate the consequences of management under different scenarios of climate change. The necessary ecological forecasting calls for ecosystem-based models capable of integrating multiple drivers across trophic levels and properly including uncertainty. The methodology presented here assesses the combined impacts of climate and fishing on marine food-web dynamics and provides estimates of the confidence envelope of the forecasts. It is applied to cod (Gadus morhua) in the Baltic Sea, which is vulnerable to climate-related decline in salinity owing to both direct and indirect effects (i.e. through species interactions) on early-life survival. A stochastic food web-model driven by regional climate scenarios is used to produce quantitative forecasts of cod dynamics in the twenty-first century. The forecasts show how exploitation would have to be adjusted in order to achieve sustainable management under different climate scenarios.