Northeast Climate Integrated Modeling Initiative (NCLIM)

Overview

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.

Background

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.

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Contributors:

Check out:

• NCLIM Phase 1
• NCLIM Phase 2
• Our Projects and Github Repositories
• Our Publications

Funding:

This work is funded by the NOAA Climate and Fisheries Adaptation Program (CAFA) with additional funding from the New England Fishery Management Council and the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR)