Understanding The Inter-Annual Variability of Fraser River Salmon Populations with Dynamic State Space Reconstruction: A New Predictive Approach for Ecological Dynamics

鲑鱼物种在文化和经济上都非常重要，是北美原住民的象征。它们的种群也是每年变化最大的种群之一，这一特点对以野生鲑鱼渔业为基础的当地经济至关重要，因为它造成了高度的财务风险或不确定性。了解是什么控制了鲑鱼种群的剧烈年度波动，并预测这些波动是一个具有重大实际意义的问题。这一问题在加州尤为明显，2009年禁止鲑鱼捕捞，这一管理决定导致该州收入损失超过2.2亿美元。 在这个项目中，将开发一种新的生态动态模式，这种模式与渔业管理和种群生物学的经典观点有很大不同，后者主要基于平衡和稳定的经典思想。该项目的目标是开发和使用来自非线性科学的新工具，这些工具使用预测，而不是事后拟合，作为最终的衡量标准。这种新的范式不需要平衡概念和稳定性，但认为渔业问题是一个动态的复杂系统的非线性相互依赖的相互作用。它明确地认识到，越来越多的证据，从实地测量的自然种群，非线性的复杂性和不稳定性是无处不在的，静态或多重平衡，虽然简单和概念上的管理，很可能是理想化的例外，而不是规则。将开发的状态空间重建方法将使用时间序列数据来重建和预测9个主要弗雷泽河红鲑种群的非平衡鲑鱼种群动态，最终目的是实施这些方法来管理渔业。

Salmon species are tremendously important both culturally, as an icon for Native North Americans, and economically. Their populations are also among the most variable from year to year, a trait that is of considerable importance for local economies based on wild salmon fisheries because it creates a high degree of financial risk or uncertainty. Understanding what controls the dramatic annual swings of salmon stocks and predicting these swings is a matter of significant practical importance. This problem was apparent in California with the 2009 ban on salmon fishing, a management decision causing a loss to state revenues in excess of $220 million. In this project, a new paradigm for ecological dynamics will be developed, one that differs dramatically from the classical views of fisheries management and population biology that are based largely on classical ideas of equilibrium and stability. The goal of this project is to develop and use new tools from nonlinear science that use prediction, as opposed to post hoc fitting, as the ultimate measure of merit. This new paradigm does not require equilibrium concepts and stability, but views the fisheries problem as a dynamic complex system of nonlinear co-dependent interactions. It explicitly recognizes the growing evidence from field measurements on natural populations that nonlinear complexity and instability are ubiquitous, and that static or multiple equilibria, though simple and conceptually manageable, are likely to be idealized exceptions rather than the rule. The state space reconstruction methods that will be developed will use time series data to reconstruct and predict non-equilibrium salmon population dynamics for the 9 major Fraser River sockeye stocks, with the ultimate view toward implementing these methods for managing this fishery.