Report from Energy Budget Group (Gifford): Presented by Jeremy
Collie
How to integrate modeling approaches:
Modeling activities of
several of the groups are useful to inform and important to the Energy Budget
group.
1) Nutrient dynamics: How much nitrate is transported onto the bank and
when? Since direct observations are limited, modeling studies can be use to
estimate f-ratios. Knowing the amount of new production is a prerequisite for
deriving energy budgets.
2) Box models of zooplankton: e.g. Calanus model
described by Franks' group. The Georges Bank energy budget is leaky, especially
for zooplankton because they are passive and have generation times on the order
of water residence times. If Georges Bank is essentially a "chemostat" for
zooplankton ("zoostat"), these imports and exports are important in the energy
budget.
GLOBEC-related activity -- size-based models of plankton and fish
populations.
3) Dynamic food web models will include predator-prey interactions and fishing.
We also need to include important environmental forcing at a very aggregated
level. (Annual time step.)
What is the "climate package" for Georges Bank?
Can it be distilled to one or a few indices on an annual basis?
This is important to GLOBEC in general.
Mechanistic processes -> climate level predictions.
4) How do food web models inform the other groups?
They set bulk constraints for the upper trophic levels.
How much nitrate is required to support primary production?
What are the predator rates on zooplankton?
How much zooplankton production is required to support fish consumption?