Humans have completely transformed the
planet's ecosystems with global
consequences (e.g. climate change). The
oceans are not immune and a pressing
research issue is to assess the
consequences of human action on marine
ecosystems. Multidisciplinary models that
link physical, chemical and ecological
processes play an increasingly important
role in that regard. They are powerful
integrators of observations and knowledge
into internally consistent
representations. They are "intelligent"
interpolators that use our best
understanding of natural processes to
fill in gaps in our observations. Well
designed numerical experiments can help
us tease apart the causes of observed
phenomena in a way analogous to
controlled experiments in the real world.
Finally, models are the principal method
to project our current knowledge into the
future. Environmental modelling has
tended to focus on physics and chemistry;
however, ecosystem or ecological
modelling is now becoming an essential
part of this process.
Our role at BIO
is to develop, evaluate and apply
ecosystem models for the purposes of
investigating interactions between
climate and marine ecosystems and of
contributing to integrated management of
these ecosystems. We perform research on
the choice of mathematical rules that
represent ecological processes and
evaluate them against laboratory and
field observations. We use statistical
techniques to improve the match between
model simulations and field data,
providing information on the model
parameters for which there is little or
no independent knowledge. Finally, we run
scenarios with different environmental
forcings to assess the potential
consequences of natural or human-driven
environmental change.
