Yassin22
commented
7 years ago Proposals #28, #25, and #10 complement each other and should be combined. Here are some additional resources that can be useful: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/hab/, https://www.epa.gov/ms-htf. Your proposal (#10) deals with Expansive Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, my proposal deals with harmful algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. I think we can also use existing data to evaluate/validate current hypoxia models. Some additional data is mentioned in proposal #28. Our proposals have the potential to significantly contribute to scientific knowledge, technically feasible, and use appropriate methods.
askolker
cnglaspie
Author: Kim de Mutsert Topics: Fisheries, hypoxia, nutrients, socio-economic impacts
Summary of synthesis
Expansive hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico will continue to affect ecologically and economically important living resources, but the magnitude, predictability and even the direction of these changes remain elusive. Managers and stakeholders need readily available and quantitative tools to predict and evaluate the effects on living resources of planned nutrient reduction strategies aimed to minimize the hypoxic zone. As part of a research project I recently started, I plan to develop user-friendly, management-scale relevant forecasting tools and quantitative indictors. In addition, I want to assess the minimum data needs (monitoring or modeling parameters, and time and space scales) to ensure these forecasts produce accurate and useful data required by managers and stakeholders. Previous work in the region by myself and colleagues resulted in three tested models and expansive datasets from seven cruises, which will be used to estimate effects of reduced nutrient inputs and hypoxic volume on living resources in the NGOMEX, and will form the basis of user-friendly tools to be transferred to resource managers. Currently my colleagues and I are aiming for “physics to fish” approaches that will assess the trade-offs of nutrient loading, namely the combined effects of increased productivity through bottom-up fueling, and altered habitat capacity or quality due to hypoxia. Initial interactions with stakeholders made it clear to me that to truly resonate with the Gulf community of fishers, fisher behavior and socio-economic impacts would need better representation in this approach. I would be interested in linking up with other participants with this kind of expertise during the gulf research program training, and expand the scope of the work from “physics to fish” to “physics to Gulf community”.
Data needs to pursue this project:
In addition to getting data ready for model population, analytical approaches with include attempting to spatially validate the model output. I hope to learn some mapping techniques during the training, and I imagine I need to learn about incorporating fuzzy logic in spatial validation. One example is using the fishing boat logbook data to check if the model can correctly simulate the location of fishing boats during (and without) hypoxic conditions. I have a gravitational model within Ecospace that determines where fleets go to catch fish/shrimp based on revenue. I would like to improve this model with socio-economic data, spatially validate fleet locations, and validate estimated revenue with actual revenue. I think it will have tremendous impact on fisheries managers, coastal managers, and the fisher communities to go from not knowing how hypoxia impacts fisheries biomass, landings, and revenue, to receiving a tool that helps estimate the effects on these parameters of nutrient reduction scenarios, or even just the predicted hypoxic area of that particular year. The tool would be a simplified version of the developed models that only allows for the alteration of nutrient scenarios and the economic parameters.