MESSAGE

Modelling Eco-System Services using AGE-structured approaches

Analysis of ecosystem services must be performed by ecosystem modelling. Ecosystem modelling is much more than traditional multi-species modelling, as some may think. For one thing, in order to include a large variety of ecosystem services, it must also include more stakeholders than traditional bioeconomic models, which typically include only those who are directly involved in the harvesting activity, consumers of marine products and possibly managers. A good ecosystem model should look at the problem from the viewpoint of the society as a whole. In particular, it should involve the aquaculture sector, the land-based processing industry, recreational fishers and tourism in addition to the harvesting sector. It must also include external effects of the economic activities such as pollution and direct and indirect pressure on biodiversity. Indirectly, it therefore includes the whole population. During the period 2012-2015 two projects were performed at SNF financed by NFR called AGAMEM and "International Management of Pelagic Fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic". Both projects have been highly successful and resulted in a large number of international publications, reports, working papers and presentations at international conferences. Important research tasks have been further development of age-structured models, for example by making them continuous in time and age. This facilitates both analytical and numerical study. These models are well suited for adaptation to the research questions mentioned above which is the aim of the proposed project.

The project is divided in four work packages:

1. Fishers behavior and response to environmental and economic changes
2. Linking market and marine ecosystem through fish prices
3. Analysis of different fleet categories and gear types and their contribution
4. Multi-species age-structured models


Principal:

The Research Council of Norway (255530/E40)

Core research team:
Stein Ivar Steinshamn (professor, NHH), project leader
Nils-Arne Ekerhovd (researcher, SNF)
Xiaozi Liu (researcher, Academia Sinica)
Evangelos Toumasatos (Ph.D. student, SNF)


Major publications:

• Nils-Arne Ekerhovd and Sturla F. Kvamsdal (2016). Up the Ante on Bioeconomic Submodels of Marine Foodwebs: A Data Assimilation-based Approach. Ecological Economics. Forthcoming.

• Sturla F. Kvamsdal, Arne Eide, Nils-Arne Ekerhovd, Katja Enberg, Asta Gudmundsdottir, Alf Håkon Hoel, Katherine E. Mills, Franz Mueter, Lars Ravn-Jonsen, Leif K. Sandal, Jan Erik Stiansen, and Niels Vestergaard (2016). Harvest Control rules in modern fisheries management. Elementa: Science of the Antropocene. doi: 10.12952/journal.elementa.000114. 

• Nils-Arne Ekerhovd and Stein Ivar Steinshamn (2015). Economic benefits of multi-species management: The pelagic fisheries in the North East Atlantic. Marine Resource Economics 31(2):193-210.


Reports:

Lectures, conferences, and workshop presentations:
• Ekerhovd, N.-A. (2016). Economic Benefits of Multi-Species Management. Presentation MESSAGE Workshop, Bergen, April 19th 2016.