Incorporating Humans In Ecosystem-Based Models of Fishery Management Grant uri icon

abstract

  • This project will use network modeling techniques to model food webs in the Core Sound region of North Carolina, incorporating humans in the food webs' predator-prey relationships in an effort to understand how shifting fishing behaviors, ecological changes, and regulatory changes affect marine food webs. We intend to test the following hypotheses: HI: Species richness will remain the same along a gradient of increasing fishing pressure (pNA -7 SNA -7 fished). . H2: The number of trophic links per species will remain the same along a gradient of increasing fishing pressure. . H3: Given no change in species richness and linkages, there will be no change in connectance along a gradient of fishing pressure. . H4: Fishers will respond to changes in species richness and connectance with gear-switching behaviors. This is an interdisciplinary project. We will combine biological sampling methodologies with ethnographic and survey methods to understand marine food webs and human influences upon them.

date/time interval

  • February 2006 - January 2010