This project addresses the interaction between the socio-economic system and the marine ecosystem by focusing on the serious problem in several Norwegian fjords including the Trondheimsfjord: the recent superabundance of the jellyfish species Periphylla p eriphylla. The question addressed here is how to manage this jellyfish in manner that is rational from both ecological and socio-economic perspectives. By using a relatively delimited ecosystem, developing interdisciplinary models, incorporating stakehol der input, and focusing on a single policy question (Periphylla-redfeed management), this project will create an interdisciplinary model for these species and move towards creation of a decision support tool to help make rational management choices based on both ecological and socio-economic criteria.
WP 1 will collect relevant available biological, economic and social data, define variables and prepare the data for integration into models by subsequent WPs. WP 2 will assess the adaptive capacity of th e community to resource situations by determining stakeholder perceptions of socio-ecological and economic aspects of jellyfish and redfeed in the Trondheimsfjord region. This will be done in a series of highly interactive stakeholder workshops employing Systems Thinking and Baysesian Belief Network modeling techniques. The workshops will explicate shared mental models of probable causal relationships among key variables. Information and models from these workshops will inform the model building in WP 3 and WP 4. WP 3 will develop a population model for the jellyfish P. periphylla that is implemented in the SINMOD ecosystem model, and develop a cod larvae model for studying the interaction between C. finmarchicus, P. periphylla and cod larvae. WP4 wi ll integrate the variables defined in WP1, the scenarios from WP2, and the ocean-ecology model developed in WP3 to further develop economic scenarios and to simulate their associated implications.