Panel C - Integration/Linkage of Biological and Physical Ecosystem Models 



Panelists: Alician Quinlan, Chairman 



Malcolm L. Spaulding, Chairman 



Ray C. Allred 



David E. Amstutz 



Edward Cohen 



Fred Everdale 



Wendy L. Gabriel 



Mark Kowalski 



Joel O'Connor 



Karl Beck Pechmann 



David S. Peters 



Andrew Stoddard 



I . INTRODUCTION 



Many biological and physical ecosystem models have been developed in recent 

 years to help marine resource managers assess the hazards and benefits of 

 diverse activities which impact the marine environment. These models, for the 

 most part, have been either species, site, or problem specific. Nonetheless, 

 their usefulness has sparked hope that they can somehow be integrated or linked 

 to form a "generic" model capable of treating a variety of ecological communities, 

 geographical locations, and impact assessment concerns. The Panel considered 

 how realistic this hope is in light of real world constraints on modeling 

 development and application, the state of the art, and our level of understanding 

 of ecological processes and interactions. 



After much discussion, the panelists agreed that development of a universal 

 application generic model or suite of generic models is neither a practical nor 

 prudent management goal today. The scope of a model is severely limited by the 

 funds, time, data, and expertise available to the modeling effort. These 

 constraints are not expected to ease much in the foreseeable future. As a 

 consequence, models must remain tailored to specific species, sites, and 

 problems, and for a good fit, the species, sites, and problems must be precisely 

 defined. To do this, the manager and modeler must continually work together to: 



(1) set reasonable limits on the funds and time available to make the 

 proper decision; 



(2) locate, interpolate, and extrapolate data needed to make the correct 

 decisions ; 



(3) identify alternative management strategies and modeling approaches; and 



(4) identify critical information gaps that must be filled by research 

 specialists . 



These conclusions emerged from the Panel's consideration of the six 

 questions posed by the workshop convenor (EDIS). The Panel's responses to each 

 question are presented in greater detail in the following pages. 



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