Ecopath, Ecosim, and Ecospace Workshop

New tools for evaluating ecosystem impacts of fishing

Lyne Morissette, UBC Fisheries Centre, Vancouver CANADA

13 May, 330-430 pm; 14 May, 5-7 pm; Bren Hall GIS lab

Purpose

  • To give participants an overview and basic knowledge of the Ecopath with Ecosim approach and software;
  • To present methods, capabilities and limitations of the approach and software;
  • To explore oceanic ecosystem models and test the effect of fishing on food web structure.

Workshop Format and Topics Marine ecosystem management is being touted today as a means of maintaining both sustainable fisheries and healthy ecosystems. In reality, marine resource conservation and management entail identifying multiple objectives and require that we make strict trade-offs among disparate fishery, conservation, social, and economic considerations. Adopting ecosystem-based management principles involves specification of additional constraints as elements in fishery management policies to preserve biodiversity, habitat integrity, and trophic structure. It will require the development of reference points in an ecosystem rather than a single-species context to define targets and limits to exploitation. Ecosystem management will also entail spatially explicit management strategies to address protection of habitat, conservation of vulnerable nontarget species, and other conservation concerns. Ecopath/Ecosim/Ecospace modeling provides a potentially powerful tool for managing the marine environment for long-term sustainability.

Presenter Lyne Morissette is a PhD candidate in Zoology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She earned her Ecology and Environment masters degree from the Université de Montréal in 1998. Under the supervision of world renowned ecologist Dr. Daniel Pauly from the Fisheries Centre, and Martin Castonguay from the Maurice-Lamontagne Institute, her PhD research involves analyzing the quality, the complexity, and the stability of marine ecosystem models of world oceans, and developing specific ecosystem models for the Gulf of St. Lawrence (eastern Canada). She is also an ecosystem modeler for the research program "Comparative Dynamics of Exploited Ecosystems in the Northwest Atlantic" (CDEENA) as, and contributes to the Sea Around Us Project , validating the published Ecopath models and completing the database.

Materials

  • Manuscript: Christensen, Walters and Pauly: Ecopath with Ecosim: A User's Guide. Available for download from User Guide3.pdf;
  • Complementary lecture: Pauly, Christensen and Walters. Ecopath, Ecosim and Ecospace as tools for evaluating ecosystem impact of fisheries; available for download from
  • Complementary lecture: Christensen and Walters. Ecopath with Ecosim: methods, capabilities and limitations; available for download from Methods.pdf;
  • Software: Ecopath with Ecosim 5.0: Beta version available free-of-charge from will be used.