Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS)
SLS - James Watson (Princeton) - Phytoplankton, Fish and Fishing: analyzing the links between oceanography, ecology and economics in marine systems
Date |
Time |
Location |
April 10th, 2013 |
12:10pm-1:00pm |
54-915 |
The ocean are a key source of nutrition for people around the world and it is important to gauge how much food the oceans can provide us twenty, fifty, and hundred years from now. Any reasonable answer to this question must account for both the impacts of climate change and direct human actions, such as fishing. Here I will present three studies - works in progress - that look at the linkages between the physics, ecology and economics of marine systems. First, a global size-based ecosystem model is used to quantify changes in the abundance and distribution of upper-trophic marine organisms as they respond to climate variability and fishing. This is an extension of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory global circulation models. Second, an application of the Regional Oceanographic Modeling System (ROMS) to nearshore marine protected area design. Here we use Lagrangian particle simulations to capture the complex web of spatial connections that define nearshore metapopulations, and assess their resilience to perturbations. Last, agent-based simulations of fishermen in idealized oceans are used to understand when and where fishermen go, and the social-foraging tactics they employ to maximize their harvest. These three exercises highlight the difficulties in modeling social and ecological processes in the ocean, but offer a path to so. I argue that along with assessing the role the oceans play in regulating the global climate, it is vital too that we quantify their role in sustaining food to the global population.