Canadian Beaufort Sea Shelf food web structure and changes from 1970-2012 / by Carie Hoover, Wojciech Walkusz, Shannon MacPhee, Andrea Niemi, Andrew Majewski, and Lisa Loseto.: Fs97-13/1313E-PDF

"In order to better understand the structure of the Canadian Beaufort Sea Shelf marine ecosystem and potential impacts of multiple stressors, an Ecopath with Ecosim food web model was created. Construction of the food web model was achieved by linking predators and prey through trophic interactions to identify the structure of the ecosystem and changes over time. The Ecopath (static) portion of the model contains 33 functional groups ranging from primary producers and detritus to whales and was set to the year 1970 to represent a past, stable ecosystem structure. The Ecopath model synthesizes existing data for the ecosystem, in addition to estimating unknown parameters such as conservative estimates of fish biomass in the system based on predator's dietary needs and ecosystem productivity. In addition, harvest mortality for all harvested fish and mammals within the model are identified and summarized. Changes to the ecosystem driven by reductions in sea ice and increases in sea surface temperature are considered large compared to harvest mortality impacts. While changes to individual species or species groups range (from -20% to +135% of starting biomass) over the 1970-2012 temporal simulation, total ecosystem biomass increases (~30%) over the historical simulation, with ecosystem trophic level remaining stable (<1% change)"--Abstract, page vii.

Permanent link to this Catalogue record:
publications.gc.ca/pub?id=9.889785&sl=0

• MARC XML format
• MARC HTML format

Request alternate formats