SIBER SPIS sept 2011.pdf - IMBER

SIBER
Science Plan and Implementation Strategy
3. Development of basinwide and regional watershed models, especially for land areas
surrounding the BoB, needs to be promoted. The importance of river-derived inputs
of nutrients to material cycling in the IO has not been examined in models. Inclusion of
sediment transport into circulation models, especially for coastal and continental shelf
regions, also needs to be considered.
4. Development of generic models to determine how ecosystem structure influences
biogeochemistry will be useful because potential feedbacks and control processes need to
be specifically explored before attempts are made to construct complex simulations.
5. The importance of iron in regulating primary production should be incorporated into models
of IO primary production (Wiggert et al., 2006) to begin to address questions regarding links
between biogeochemical cycles and food web structure.
6. Impacts of ocean acidification and warming will require a specific focus on impacts at
different levels of the ecosystem: stress on organisms through pH and temperature changes,
alterations in calcification rates of autotrophic species (hence impacts on production and
phytoplankton community composition) and changes in calcification rates and bleaching of
coral species. Models are required that quantitatively assess these impacts and examine
potential food web effects.
7. The next generation of biogeochemical models should include explicit food web dynamics.
Validation and testing of such models will require appropriate data (that are not often collected
simultaneously) at the required scales. This presents a challenge for the development of
field programs.
8. Most biogeochemical models developed for the IO focus on the euphotic zone. Depthrelated
vertical links in food webs, for example links to the mesopelagic layer and its role
in controlling biogeochemical cycles and benthic production are largely unexplored in
model studies. The biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics of this large and important
environmental regime known as the mesopelagic zone, where organic material is
remineralized, are poorly understood.
9. Coupling of pelagic-based biogeochemical models to benthic models will be important for
some IO coastal regions to develop a more complete picture of pelagic-benthic coupling
processes.
Objective 3: To determine how ecosystem structure and dynamics should be incorporated
into management approaches to sustainable exploitation of living resources in the
Indian Ocean
Model development should involve consideration of the following issues:
1. Much of the management-related modeling has tended to focus on single species harvestingbased
models. In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the ecosystembased
approach, incorporating food web interactions and environment links.
2. SIBER will complement and contribute to the work of IO island and rim nation fisheries
management efforts in developing modeling approaches for sustainable management
of IO resources, providing a broad ecological perspective. A range of models have been
developed to examine upper trophic level food web interactions with a particular focus on
the effects of harvesting (see for example Hill et al., 2006).
3. SIBER will investigate how the structure and dynamics of IO ecosystems should be
represented in ecosystem models used in resource management. The complexity of these
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