NCLIM-Northeast Climate Integrated Modeling Initiative

The Northeast Climate Integrated Modeling initiative (NCLIM) is an interdisciplinary effort to support climate-informed fisheries decision making in the Northeast U.S. The project seeks to build on national efforts to incorporate climate science into fishery decision making (e.g. ACLIM in the Bering Sea, regional IEAs) by building a regional community of practice to support integrated climate, ecosystem, socio-economic, and fishery modeling. Our goal is to leverage the resulting model framework to provide scientific support to fishery and marine resource decision makers grappling with current and future climate consequences.

Commercial and recreational fisheries are economic and cultural staples for many communities in the Northeast U.S., but changing environmental conditions call into question the long-term viability of these fisheries. Observed shifts in species distributions and productivity have already been linked to ocean warming and these impacts are expected to grow over time as waters in the Northwest Atlantic continue to warm at a rate four times the global average. There is an increasing need to understand how environmental shifts impact fisheries and develop adaptive strategies for fisheries to continue operating in the future.

Beyond biological and ecosystem impacts, changing climate can directly impact the efficacy of existing fisheries management efforts. Stock assessments make data-informed assumptions about biological processes (e.g. growth, recruitment, and mortality) and harvesting characteristics (e.g. survey and fishery catchability) to evaluate stock status. Failure to identify and integrate climate impacts on stock and fishery dynamics into management procedures can result in biased estimates of stock status and ineffective harvest control rules. There is a need to identify when and how climate influences stock and fishery dynamics and to explore candidate management procedures that account for climate impacts more explicitly.

Building multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and modelling capacity is a key to the development and testing of adaptive management responses. The NCLIM team identified research track stock assessments as an initial path to integrate regional climate research with fisheries management processes. One goal of this approach is to identify climate uncertainties and their impacts on regional fisheries management and to develop candidate climate-informed stock assessments to supplement or replace current methods and provide improved advice. Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) is a key tool that can leverage NCLIM’s modeling framework to account for climate uncertainties, test current and candidate climate-informed assessments, and evaluate stakeholder-defined objectives to support fishery decision making.

Core objectives include:

Building a Community of Practice

Join the Northeast Climate-Fisheries Seminar Series

This seminar series will focus on sharing climate-fisheries research in the U.S. Northeast region with the goal of building broader awareness of efforts across research groups and facilitating collaboration. We invite presentations on research projects that are either in progress or recently completed. We anticipate talks will cover a variety of themes, including: 1) advances in ocean observations, modeling, and prediction 2) mechanistic studies of climate/environmental impacts on marine fish and invertebrates, 3) marine species habitat, distribution, and abundance modeling, 4) climate enhanced stock assessments and fisheries management, and 5) climate informed studies on human dimensions and economics.

The series is held on the last Thursday of each month from noon to 1pm. Remote Access through Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/paw-jhrb-nzr

Building an Integrated Modeling Framework

The NCLIM modeling framework aims to integrate: 1) global climate models, 2) regional oceanographic models, 3) ecosystem and population models, and 4) human dimensions models. Our development of an integrated modeling framework has progressed during the initial phase of NCLIM and leverages several aspects of ongoing research, including advances in regional ocean modeling (i.e., NOAA-GFDL MOM6 model), a next generation stock assessment (i.e., Woods Hole Assessment Model, WHAM), and an existing management strategy evaluation framework (i.e., Groundfish-MSE). We have also made significant progress on development of a dynamic range model that simulates a spatially explicit age structured population that can emulate temperature dependence of life processes (e.g., recruitment, natural mortality, and dispersal). The framework is built for testing the robustness of fisheries management strategies to climate change impacts, including shifting species distribution and changes in fish productivity.

Project repositories:

• NOAA-GFDL MOM6 model: Modular Ocean Model 6 development
• Groundfish-MSE: A Management Strategy Evaluation Framework for New England Groundfish
• SSRTWG: Repository for the State-Space Research Track Working Group
• WHAM: Woods Hole Assessment Model (WHAM) repository
• PlaiceWG2021: Repository for WHAM modeling of American plaice in support of 2021-2022 research track stock assessment
• Plaice environmental drivers: Repository for modeling of American plaice in support of 2021-2022 research track stock assessment
• Indicators-Stock Dynamics

Application in Research Track Stock Assessments

NCLIM: Gulf of Maine Cod Climate-Informed Stock Assessment

Atlantic cod is an iconic species in the Northeast U.S. that historically supported large domestic and foreign fisheries, but is now considered overfished with overfishing occurring. Difficulties rebuilding the stock may be hindered by recent decreases in productivity and increased mortality attributed to warming ocean temperatures. Incorporating time-varying and temperature-dependent natural mortality has been shown to improve stock assessment diagnostics for this species, but there is room for further exploration of climate links to population dynamics. The NCLIM framework will be leveraged to integrate climate considerations into the research track stock assessment process for Gulf of Maine cod.

Project Goals:

• Explore assessment models that allow for time-varying processes
• Develop and test candidate assessments using the NCLIM framework in collaboration with the Research Track Working Group for Atlantic Cod
• Compare candidate and status quo assessments
• Share findings with WG members and synthesize climate context for WG report (TOR1)

NCLIM: American Plaice Climate-Informed Stock Assessment

American plaice is a commercially important flatfish in the Northeast U.S. and Canada that is considered rebuilt. In recent years plaice have shifted further offshore and into deeper water, this shift is expected to continue with likely negative effects on the stock as ocean temperatures warm and suitable habitat contracts. Temperature has been shown to influence plaice distribution, depth, growth rate, recruitment, and possibly maturity, while other climate drivers (e.g. NAO, AMO) have been linked to changing recruits per spawner and distribution. Although population dynamics and distribution have clear links to climate dynamics, to date these influences have not been incorporated into stock assessments for plaice nor has this knowledge been used to provide estimates of climate uncertainties that may benefit decision-making processes. The NCLIM framework will be leveraged to integrate climate considerations into the research track stock assessment process for American plaice.

Project Goals:

• Identify key climate drivers for American plaice and proposed links to stock dynamics
• Develop and test candidate assessments using the NCLIM framework in collaboration with the American Plaice Assessment Working Group (WG)
• Compare candidate and status quo assessments (Woods Hole Assessment Model code available here)
• Share findings with WG members and synthesize climate context for WG report (TOR1)

Key climate-informed products and working papers:

• Working paper: Spatio-temporal dynamics of American plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides) in US 2 waters of the northwest Atlantic
• Working paper: Ecosystem profile of American plaice
• Working paper: Environmental influences on American Plaice stock dynamics
• Working paper: A state-space assessment of American plaice using the Woods Hole Assessment Model (WHAM)
• All assessment products and results can be found on the NEFSC Stock Assessment Support Information portal for the 2022 American plaice Research Track Assessment

NCLIM: Black Sea Bass Climate-Informed Stock Assessment

Black sea bass is a commercially and recreationally important species in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions that has shown increased productivity in response to warming temperatures. The species has exhibited a northward shift in response to climate that is captured by divergent state surveys (increases in northern surveys and decreases in the south) but the coastwide survey suggests variability without trend. The single-area stock assessment proposed in 2012 struggled to replicate these divergent survey trends and the model ultimately did not pass review. Subsequent work found that two-area models exhibited improved fit to survey data, and there is interest in further exploring approaches to account for climate-driven species distribution shifts in stock assessments. The NCLIM framework will be leveraged to integrate climate considerations into the research track stock assessment process for black sea bass.

Project Goals:

• Explore assessment models that can account for changing resource distribution and productivity
• Develop and test candidate assessments using the NCLIM framework in collaboration with the Black Sea Bass Assessment Working Group (WG)
• Compare candidate and status quo assessments
• Share findings with WG members and synthesize climate context for WG report (TOR1)

Collaborators:

Funding:

Contact:

Lisa Kerr (lkerr@gmri.org)