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This project began in January 2012 and was completed in December 2015
Why We Care
Food webs of the California Current sustain fisheries of great economic importance
to the western U.S. coast. Projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide will
likely increase ocean acidity, leading to reduced populations of marine species,
including those that make up California Current food webs. Though there are
considerable ongoing efforts to understand ocean acidification effects on particular
species, there have been few attempts to forecast how ocean acidification will
interact with climate change, hypoxia (low oxygen conditions) and fishing pressure
to impact whole food webs and fisheries.
A large-scale ocean model will predict ocean acidification trends in the California
Current as well as local salinity, currents, and upwelling. Next, these predictions
will be coupled to an ecosystem model to:
project direct impacts of acidification on the food web supporting U.S. West Coast
fisheries and
measure interactive effects and cumulative impacts of acidification, hypoxia,
temperature, and fishing.
These results will predict seafood landings which then will be translated into
economic impacts on the broader West Coast economy. This information can be
used to:
evaluate the likely economic and ecological outcomes of ocean acidification in the
California Current and
map these outcomes over space to show where the greatest effects are likely to be
seen.
This project is under the NCCOS Regional Ecosystem Prediction Program (REPP).
Funding is provided through the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program. The project is
led by Isaac Kaplan and Shallin Busch, Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
Project partners include Elizabeth Fulton of the Commonwealth of Australia’s
Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), and Tim Essington and
Albert Hermann of the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery
Sciences.
mapear estos resultados en el espacio para mostrar dónde es probable que se ven
los mayores efectos.