Unsuitability of TAC management within an ecosystem approach to fisheries: An ecological perspective

Fisheries management in European waters is gradually moving from a single-species perspective towards a more holistic ecosystem approach to management (EAM), acknowledging the need to take all ecosystem components into account. Prerequisite within an EAM is the need for management processes that directly influence the ecological effects of fishing, such as the mortality of target and non-target species. Up until recently, placing limits on the quantities of fish that can be landed, through the imposition of annual total allowable catches (TACs) for the target species, has been the principal management mechanism employed. However, pressure on non-target components of marine ecosystems is more closely linked to prevailing levels of fishing activity, so only if TACs are closely related to subsequent fishing effort will TAC management serve to control the broader ecosystem impacts of fishing. We show that in the mixed fisheries that characterise the North Sea, the linkage between variation in TAC and the resulting fishing effort is in fact generally weak. Reliance solely on TACs to regulate fishing activity is therefore unlikely to mitigate the impacts of fishing on non-target species. Consequently, we conclude that the relationship between TACs and effort is insufficient for TACs to be used as the principal management tool within an EAM. The implications, and some alternatives, for fisheries management are discussed.     

Canonical correspondence analysis and related multivariate methods in aquatic ecology

Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) is a multivariate method to elucidate the relationships between biological assemblages of species and their environment. The method is designed to extract synthetic environmental gradients from ecological data-sets. The gradients are the basis for succinctly describing and visualizing the differential habitat preferences (niches) of taxavia an ordination diagram. Linear multivariate methods for relating two set of variables, such as two-block Partial Least Squares (PLS2), canonical correlation analysis and redundancy analysis, are less suited for this purpose because habitat preferences are often unimodal functions of habitat variables. After pointing out the key assumptions underlying CCA, the paper focuses on the interpretation of CCA ordination diagrams. Subsequently, some advanced uses, such as ranking environmental variables in importance and the statistical testing of effects are illustrated on a typical macroinvertebrate data-set. The paper closes with comparisons with correspondence analysis, discriminant analysis, PLS2 and co-inertia analysis. In an appendix a new method, named CCA-PLS, is proposed that combines the strong features of CCA and PLS2.     

Investigating relationship between drought severity in Botswana and ENSO

Natural Hazards - The objective, accurate and rapid quantification of agricultural drought is the key component of effective drought planning and management mechanism. The present study proposed a...     

From streambed temperature measurements to spatial‐temporal flux quantification: using the LPML method to study groundwater–surface water interaction

Knowledge on groundwater–surface water interaction and especially on exchange fluxes between streams and aquifers is an important prerequisite for the study of transport and fate of contaminants and nutrients in the hyporheic zone. One possibility to quantify groundwater–surface water exchange fluxes is by using heat as an environmlental tracer. Modern field equipment including multilevel temperature sticks and the novel open‐source analysis tool LPML make this technique ever more attractive. The recently developed LPML method solves the one‐dimensional fluid flow and heat transport equation by combining a local polynomial method with a maximum likelihood estimator. In this study, we apply the LPML method on field data to quantify the spatial and temporal variability of vertical fluxes and their uncertainties from temperature–time series measured in a Belgian lowland stream. Over several months, temperature data were collected with multilevel temperature sticks at the streambed top and at six depths for a small stream section. Long‐term estimates show a range from gaining fluxes of ?291 mm day^?1 to loosing fluxes of 12 mm day^?1; average seasonal fluxes ranged from ?138 mm day^?1 in winter to ?16 mm day^?1 in summer. With our analyses, we could determine a high spatial and temporal variability of vertical exchange fluxes for the investigated stream section. Such spatial and temporal variability should be taken into account in biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nutrients and metals and in fate analysis of contaminant plumes. In general, the stream section was gaining during most of the observation period. Two short‐term high stream stage events, seemingly caused by blockage of the stream outlet, led to a change in flow direction from gaining to losing conditions. We also found more discharge occurring at the outer stream bank than at the inner one indicating a local flow‐through system. With the conducted analyses, we were able to advance our understanding of the regional groundwater flow system. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Hormuz Strait Dam Macroproject—21st Century Electricity Development Infrastructure Node (EDIN)?

Ocean gulfs offer a means of artificially creating a depression, which can be used for a regionally significant hydroelectric macroproject. We examine here the case for a dam at the Strait of Hormuz that blocks a large gulf situated in an arid region. A 35 m evaporation of this concentration basin will reduce its watery surface area by ∼53% and allow generation of ∼2.050 MW (or possibly ∼2.500 MW) of electricity. Our conclusion is that the proposed Electricity Development Infrastructure Node (EDIN) is a feasible and desirable macroproject. If the macroproject starts in the near-term future, it would require a significant change in the logistics of oil and gas transport from this region. Alternatively, it can be considered as an attractive future solution for the energy requirements of the region after exhaustion of its oil and gas reserves.