Sponsored Research Archives - Page 13 of 37 - NCCOS - National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science

Parameter estimation using an ensemble smoother: the effect of the circulation in biological estimation

An ensemble smoother is used to estimate the initial conditions and mortality rates for a spatially explicit model of Alexandrium fundyense. The data assimilation procedure is effective at reducing model-data misfit in this strong constraint problem formulation. The skill of this estimation procedure is assessed through cross-validation. The estimation is carried out with three different … Read more

The New Fisheries Economics: Incentives Across Many Margins

New research in fisheries economics addresses incentives across many margins. These margins include within-season effects, incentives to harvest different ages and sizes of fish, responses to ecological disturbances, spatial choices, and multispecies interactions. Even developments in global seafood markets are relevant for understanding contemporary fisheries management. What connects this diverse literature is the attempt to … Read more

Spatial-dynamics of Hypoxia and Fisheries: The Case of Gulf of Mexico Brown Shrimp

We analyze the Gulf of Mexico brown shrimp fishery and the potential impacts of a large seasonal area of hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen) that coincides with the peak shrimp season. A spatial-dynamic bioeconomic simulation embeds three biological impacts on shrimp: mortality, growth, and aggregation on hypoxic edges. Hypoxia creates feedbacks in the bioeconomic system, altering … Read more

The metabolism of aquatic ecosystems: History, applications, and future challenges

Measurements of the production and consumption of organic material have been a focus of aquatic science for more than 80 years. Over the last century, a variety of approaches have been developed and employed for measuring rates of gross primary production (Pg), respiration (R), and net ecosystem production (Pn = Pg ? R) within aquatic … Read more

Effects of an Acute Hypoxic Event on Microplankton Community Structure in a Coastal Harbor of Southern California

Fish mortality and hypoxic events occur in many coastal and inland systems and may result from natural or anthropogenically mediated processes. The effects of consequent changes in water biogeochemistry have been investigated for communities of benthic invertebrates and pelagic metazoans. The responses of micro-plankton assemblages, however, have remained largely unstudied. The northern basin of King … Read more

Status, Causes and Controls of Cyanobacterial Blooms in Lake Erie

The Laurentian Great Lakes are among the most prominent sources of fresh water in the world. Lake Erie’s infamous cyanobacterial blooms have, however, threatened the health of this valuable freshwater resource for decades. Toxic blooms dominated by the cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa have most recently been one of primary ecological concerns for the lake. These toxic … Read more

Corrigendum to “Status, Causes and Controls of Cyanobacterial Blooms in Lake Erie”

The authors regret that, during analyses of various data sets, we inadvertently used TKN (Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen) in place of TN (Total Nitrogen) for the Maumee River tributary. We now present the corrected data from the original Fig. 5 (as Fig. 5 (corrected) in this article) which demonstrates that our initial conclusions discussed within the … Read more

Skill Assessment for Coupled Biological/Physical Models of Marine Systems

Coupled biological/physical models of marine systems serve many purposes including the synthesis of information, hypothesis generation, and as a tool for numerical experimentation. However, marine system models are increasingly used for prediction to support high-stakes decision-making. In such applications it is imperative that a rigorous model skill assessment is conducted so that the model’s capabilities … Read more

Stable isotopes in mollusk shells as indicators of benthic respiration and freshwater penetration on the Texas-Louisiana Shelf

To investigate the potential for mollusks to serve as proxies for benthic respiration and hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), five gastropod (Conus austini Rehder and Abbott, 1951 and Strombus alatus Gmelin, 1791) and five bivalve (Pteria colymbus Röding, 1798 and Spondylus calcifer Carpenter, 1857) shells, from six Texas-Louisiana shelf localities during three periods … Read more

Estuarine classification and response to nitrogen loading: Insights from simple ecological models

Estuaries exhibit a large range in their responses to nitrogen loadings determined in part by characteristics of the driver, such as magnitude and frequency, but also by such intrinsic characteristics as physical/chemical factors (e.g., depth, volume, hypsometry, salinity, turbidity) and biological factors (e.g., nature of ecological communities, trophic interactions). To address the richness of estuarine … Read more