Agenda

Jorge Lopez Parages, DAIS - Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia

Titolo: Exploring large-scale climate influences on North West African fisheries and related implications for statistical forecasting

Abstract:
There are still many questions about the environmental forcings on marine biological ecosystems that need to be addressed. Of special relevance are those associated with the so-called Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) due to their great climatic and socio-economic importance, being the latter specially crucial for some regions along the globe such as the North West African region (hereinafter NWAf). Along this professional experience the possible impacts of large-scale climate phenomena on small pelagic fishes distribution along the NWAfr coastal line has been explored. This understanding, even partially, would be of great importance given the specific weight of fisheries for the economies of the North West African countries. The possible teleconnections linking large-scale climate forcings and NWAfr fisheries would be interesting on its own, but those associated with the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) processes are of special importance, since they could noticeably contribute to the development of a seasonal prediction system of fisheries. This work falls within the objectives of the European project PREFACE () and it has meant an exercise of collaboration between climatologists, statisticians and marine biologist with the intention of exploring the potential predictability of the fisheries in the NWAfupwelling system from a rigorous and feasible approach. To this aim, we have used data provided by the couple model compounded by the Regional Oceanic Modeling System ROMS configured for the NW African upwelling system and by the biogeochemical model PISCES, which simulates plankton productivity and carbon biomass based upon the main nutrients. This coupled model has been run over the period 1980-2009 using atmospheric forcings and consistent oceanic boundary conditions (from NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis). Finally, an evolutionary individual-based Lagrangian model has been used to simulate the spatial-temporal behavior of the small pelagic fishes, at different stages, according to the environmental constraints obtained from ROMS. The results obtained point to a robust El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence on the Mauritanian fish stocks. This open a window of opportunity for exploring the potential statistical forecasting of fisheries in the aforementioned region. The development of this statistical prediction tool represents an ongoing work but substantial progress is expected in the next future. Additionally, an interesting south to north migration of the retention areas (those with favorable coastal habitats for fisheries) along the NWAfr coast has been identified during the last 25 years. This result, which is still under analysis, could have important implications for assessing the adaptation of small pelagic fisheries under the current global warming context.

Bio Sketch:
Dr Parages is a post-doctoral fellow at DAIS.