Modeling Fish Populations and Aquatic Ecosystems
Species Conservation and Management: Case Studies is a new book that includes the application of population and metapopulation models to a wide variety of species, including 6 fish species.
IMPACTS ON ENDANGERED FISH
How do we protect native species while serving public needs for recreation, commercial fishing, power generation, and water diversion?
Ecological risk methods allow you to assess the impacts of alternative management strategies on the populations of aquatic species.
We can use modeling to exclude hypotheses even without data.
Example: Shortnose Sturgeon in the Connecticut River
We can use models to design management strategies to foster native species and assess the tradeoffs with other goals.
THERMALLY-SENSITIVE SPECIES
How do elevated water temperatures affect populations of aquatic species?
What impact might elevated water temperatures have on populations of aquatic species? A risk-based approach can provide guidelines about the parameters and assumptions to which the results are most sensitive.
One cannot predict population level effects from individuals' tolerances.
Example: Three Redhorse Sucker Species in the Muskingum River.
What do these mean?
BIOINDICATORS & TOXICITY
ENTRAINMENT & IMPINGEMENT EFFECTS
What are the population-level consequences of impingement and entrainment on aquatic species?
You can assess how anthropogenic impacts affect future population abundance, i.e., risks of population decline, using population modeling.
Bioassays with aquatic species are used to assess the toxicity of sediments to organisms living in the water column or on the bottom.
How do you use the results of these tests to measure the long-term effects on the populations?
Population modeling puts the ecology into ecotoxicology.
Example: Daphnia & Neanthes
Models provide a quantitative measure of effects at the population level.
