Climate and ocean dynamics informing resource management and adaptation policy

鱼类的丰度、分布和大小与水温和营养状况等海洋条件的变化有着内在的联系。它们还深受人类活动的影响，其中最突出的是渔业开发。虽然渔业管理考虑了后者的历史记录，但人们对海洋环境变化与一般海洋生态系统、特别是鱼类群落之间的历史联系知之甚少。该项目将对过去 2000 年（涵盖前殖民时期和后欧洲定居世界的时间跨度）西北大西洋生态系统中鱼类丰度的海洋动态进行高分辨率和定量重建。来自沉积、珊瑚和软体动物记录的海洋环境条件变化记录将与沉积记录中保存的鱼类微化石（鱼石）以及考古和历史数据中鱼类丰度、大小和群落结构变化的记录相结合。这些数据集将与现实的气候生物地球化学-生态系统-捕鱼后报耦合模型进行比较。这种结合不同时间序列的高度创新方法将首次为气候变化适应政策和生态系统管理的变化基线提供参考点，并将直接为综合模型提供信息，以提高政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）预测的气候情景下生态系统预测的预测能力。我们的结果将通过与我们的最终用户（包括 DFO 和加拿大世界野生动物基金会 (WWF)）合作，通过外展、教育和宣传工作，传达给渔业和海洋部 (DFO) 等决策者以及公众。我们的结果也将立即适用于渔业和海洋管理流程，包括转向基于生态系统的渔业管理和广泛的空间保护。

The abundance, distribution, and size of fish species are intrinsically linked to changing ocean conditions such as water temperatures and nutrient regimes. They are also profoundly affected by human activities, most prominently fisheries exploitation. While historical accounts of the latter are taken into account in fisheries management, very little is known about the historical link between ocean environmental change and marine ecosystems in general, and fish communities in particular. This project will generate high resolution and quantitative reconstructions of ocean dynamics vis-à-vis fish abundances in the Northwest Atlantic ecosystem during the last 2,000 years, a time span covering both the pre-Colonial and post- European settlement world. Records of changing ocean environmental conditions derived from sedimentary, coral and mollusk records will be combined with records of variations in fish abundance, size, and community structure from both fish microfossils (ichthyoliths) preserved in the sedimentary record and from archaeological and historical data. These data sets will be compared with realistic coupled climate biogeochemistry-ecosystem-fishing hindcast models. This highly innovative approach of combining diverse time series will, for the first time, provide reference points on a shifting baseline for climate change adaptation policy and ecosystem management and will directly inform integrative models to improve predictive capacity of ecosystem forecasts under Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected climate scenarios. Our results will be communicated to decision makers, such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), and the public through outreach, education, and advocacy efforts in collaboration with our end-users, including DFO and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada. Our results will also be immediately applicable to fisheries and oceans management processes, including a move towards ecosystem-based fisheries management and broad scale spatial protections.