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HAVKYST-Havet og kysten

Overseas Research Grant for Dr. Sturla Kvamsdal to visit Dept. of Agr. and Res. Econ. at UC Berkeley

Awarded: NOK 0.23 mill.

Below follows a summary of the 'Havet og Kysten' project Bioeconomic Multispecies Analysis of Marine Ecosystems. Next follow a short exposition of the main topics which will be under research at UC Berkeley. Our investigation will focus on strategies for optimal and simultaneous decisions concerning capelin, herring and cod in the Barents Sea, one of the most productive ocean areas in the world. The ecosystem is highly dynamic and volatile. The modeling of a top-down and multidimensional bioeconomic deci sion process may be used to produce economic sound and informational efficient management strategies ensuring long term sustainability. Given the level of aggregation, the resulting feedback policies should be validated by more detailed biological ecosyst em models which, by themselves, lack the ability to determine optimal policies (in any interpretation of the term optimal). A successful outcome of the proposed project will develop basic as well as applied scientific results in the fields of bioeconomics and fishery research, numerical modeling of multidimensional stochastic bioprocesses, and operational research and management science. My main focus during my visit to UC Berkeley will be on developing and finish two manuscripts which are already in pro gress. The first, entitled 'The Ensemble Kalman Filter in Bioeconomics,' is concerned with how to build ecosystem management models for use in a bioeconomic analysis. Traditionally, it has proved difficult if not impossible to merge the analytical need fo r limited dimensionality with representative dynamics in the ecosystem model. In the manuscript, we show that with the use of the ensemble Kalman filter, we are able to capture the complex dynamics observed in ecosystems with low-dimensional models. The s econd manuscript aims to apply bioeconomic analysis to a model of the main Barents Sea fisheries. In its utmost consequence, it offers an operational framework for ecosystem-based fisheries management.

Funding scheme:

HAVKYST-Havet og kysten