Comparing and coupling a water quality and a fisheries ecosystem model of the Chesapeake Bay for the exploratory assessment of resource management strategies

Abstract

Abstract The Chesapeake Bay (CB) is the North America's largest estuary and is a highly productive ecosystem. State and Federal agencies have been working for over two decades to implement ecosystem-based management (EBM), which will allow the understanding of the impacts of cumulative stressors and enable decision-making that incorporates trade-offs in ecosystem goods and services. To effectively move towards EBM, models that account for bottom-up (e.g. eutrophication) as well as top-down (e.g. fisheries harvest) drivers are necessary. One step towards the integrated analysis of ecosystem stressors is to integrate the existing models that capture bottom-up and top-down effects. In this paper, the efforts of integrating the CB fisheries ecosystem model and the water quality model are described. Specifically, to achieve the integration of these two models, the methods for (i) model comparisons and (ii) model coupling outlined in a report by the CB Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee are implemented for this paper. Comparative analyses of the two models were performed to assess the model structure uncertainty. Broad indirect coupling of these models allows connections between water quality and commercially and recreationally important species to be made and used to assess trade-offs between water quality management goals and fisheries management goals.