BE/CNH: Linking Human and Biophysical Processes in Coastal Marine Ecosystems of Baja California

小规模渔业在沿海海洋生态系统中占主导地位，世界上90%以上的渔民从事小规模渔业，每年的海洋捕获量占世界海洋捕获量的一半以上，但人们对其动态知之甚少。由于缺乏数据，大多数小规模渔业的多物种和多船队性质，以及地方、区域和全球范围内人类机构之间复杂的反馈，现有的渔业模式不适用于大多数小规模渔业。将地方开发与多目标物种的多尺度管理相结合，为从地方社区到中央政府的不同尺度管理的生物和社会经济效益的比较提供了一个试验台。大多数小规模捕鱼集中在生产力和多样性高的沿海地区，如珊瑚礁、沿海泻湖和河口。这些反过来又由近岸海洋环境中的海洋过程和陆海界面发生的交换之间的复杂相互作用维持。这个跨学科的研究项目将同时考虑这些复杂性的不同方面，以研究可能表征墨西哥下加利福尼亚太平洋沿岸小规模渔业的更高层次的紧急行为。本研究计划将解决以下首要问题：如何解释小规模渔业和相关沿海海洋生态系统绩效的变化？根据资源生产力、经济产出、人类活动和社区的可持续性以及海洋种群和生态系统的持久性来评估绩效。需要解决的具体问题包括：(1)在决定小规模渔业绩效方面，环境变异性和人类机构之间的相对作用和反馈是什么？(2)小规模渔业的生物物理和人类成分之间的反馈在空间（地方到区域）和时间（年与年）尺度上是如何变化的？(3)哪些渔业管理系统对不确定性更强？研究将包括开发一系列综合生物物理、基于主体和生物经济模型；对渔获量、渔获量和海洋状况的历史趋势进行统计分析和回顾性分析；并通过生态和人种学实地研究获得新的数据。本项目将对生物复杂性理论、研究方法和应用做出重大贡献。首先，它将阐明通过沿海海洋系统中的渔业联系起来的生物、物理和人类过程之间复杂的相互作用和反馈。它将综合社会经济、生态和海洋学方法，建立小规模渔业时空动态的预测模型。第二，本研究计划将提供研究生在建模和综合社会和生态领域的方法来研究人类-自然系统的训练。最后，它将为小型渔业的管理提供一般性指导，并为审查环境变化的可能结果、渔业条例和奖励的变化以及与人口增加和沿海发展有关的沿海资源的新的和未来的利用提供一个框架。该项目得到了2004年度环境生物复杂性特别竞赛的支持，该竞赛侧重于自然和人类系统耦合动力学。

Small-scale fisheries are dominant actors in coastal marine ecosystems, engaging more than 90 percent of the fishers in the world and producing more than one-half of the world's annual marine catch, but their dynamics are poorly understood. Scarcity of data, the multi-species and multi-fleet nature of most small-scale fisheries, and complex feedbacks among human institutions at the local, regional, and global scale render existing fisheries models inapplicable to most small-scale fisheries. The combination of local exploitation with multi-scale management of multiple target species creates a test bed for comparison of the biological and socioeconomic effectiveness of management at different scales ranging from the local community to centralized government. Most small-scale fishing is concentrated in coastal areas characterized by high productivity and diversity, such as coral reefs, coastal lagoons, and estuaries. These in turn are maintained by complex interactions between oceanographic processes in the nearshore marine environment and exchanges occurring at the land-sea interface. This interdisciplinary research project will simultaneously consider these different facets of complexity to examine higher-level, emergent behaviors that are likely to characterize small-scale fisheries of the Pacific coast of Baja California, Mexico. This research program will address the following overarching question: What explains the variation in performance of small-scale fisheries and associated coastal marine ecosystems? Performance is evaluated in terms of resource productivity, economic yield, sustainability of human activities and communities, and persistence of marine populations and ecosystems. Specific questions to be addressed include: (1) What are the relative roles and feedbacks between environmental variability and human institutions in determining the performance of small-scale fisheries? (2) How do feedbacks among biophysical and human components of small-scale fisheries vary across spatial (local to regional) and temporal (year-to-year vs. decadal) scales? (3) What fisheries management systems are more robust to uncertainty? Research will include the development of a series of integrated biophysical, agent-based, and bioeconomic models; statistical analysis and retrospective analyses of historical trends in catches, effort, and oceanographic conditions; and acquisition of new data through ecological and ethnographic field studies.This project will make significant contributions to biocomplexity theory, research approaches, and applications. First, it will elucidate complex interactions and feedbacks among biological, physical, and human processes linked through fisheries in coastal marine systems. It will integrate socioeconomic, ecological, and oceanographic approaches to produce predictive models of the spatial and temporal dynamics of small-scale fisheries. Second, this research program will provide graduate training in modeling and integrated social and ecological field approaches to studying human-natural systems. Finally, it will provide general guidance for the management of small-scale fisheries and a framework for examining the possible outcomes of environmental change, changes in fisheries regulations and incentives, and the new and future uses of coastal resources associated with population increases and coastal development. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2004 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.