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

小型渔业是沿海海洋生态系统中的主要行为者，吸引了世界90%以上的渔民，生产了世界年海洋捕获量的一半以上，但人们对其动态了解甚少。数据的匮乏、大多数小规模渔业的多鱼种和多船队性质以及人类机构在地方、区域和全球范围内的复杂反馈，使得现有的渔业模型不适用于大多数小规模渔业。地方开发与多种目标物种的多尺度管理相结合，为比较从当地社区到中央政府的不同尺度上的管理的生物学和社会经济效果创造了试验台。大多数小规模捕捞集中在以高生产力和多样性为特征的沿海地区，如珊瑚礁、沿海泻湖和河口。近岸海洋环境中的海洋过程与陆地-海洋界面上发生的交换之间的复杂相互作用又维持着这些作用。这一跨学科研究项目将同时考虑复杂性的这些不同方面，以检查可能成为墨西哥下加利福尼亚州太平洋海岸小规模渔业特征的更高级别的新兴行为。这项研究计划将解决以下主要问题：如何解释小规模渔业和相关的沿海海洋生态系统表现的差异？根据资源生产力、经济产量、人类活动和社区的可持续性以及海洋人口和生态系统的可持续性来评估绩效。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)小规模渔业生物物理部分和人类部分之间的反馈如何在空间(地方到区域)和时间(年际与年代际)尺度上变化？(3)哪些渔业管理系统对不确定性更为稳健？研究将包括开发一系列综合的生物物理、基于制剂和生物经济的模型；对渔获量、产量和海洋条件的历史趋势进行统计分析和回顾分析；通过生态学和人种学实地研究获取新的数据。该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的渔业联系起来的生物、物理和人类过程之间的复杂相互作用和反馈。它将整合社会经济、生态和海洋学方法，以产生小规模渔业时空动态的预测模型。其次，该研究计划将提供建模方面的研究生培训，以及研究人类-自然系统的综合社会和生态领域方法。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、渔业法规和激励措施的变化以及与人口增加和沿海开发有关的沿海资源的新用途和未来用途提供一个框架。该项目得到了2004财年环境中生物复杂性特别竞赛的一个奖项的支持，该竞赛的重点是自然和人类耦合系统的动态变化。

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.