Advancing Connectivity Modelling to Inform Marine Conservation and Management

Canada is part of ambitious global efforts to conduct the science needed to conserve marine biodiversity and sustainably manage fisheries. Most marine fish and invertebrates have a planktonic stage that can be transported 10s-100s of km by ocean currents, affecting their distribution and survival as a species. This movement of organisms now and with future climate change must be considered, but it is challenging to characterize such connectivity, and decision-makers need more information. Models that integrate knowledge and data by coupling ocean physics to biological questions are necessary tools for providing insight and predictions that traditional empirical studies do not support. Through strategic model design and rigorous analysis, my proposed research will develop new models to assess connectivity in the context of changing climate and human use of the ocean, and provide novel analyses that will benefit conservation and management activities. At the core of my modeling approach is a method called Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) that simulates the transport of "particles" such as planktonic larvae by the ocean currents. LPT models output particle trajectories, which enable visualization of pathways and settlement patterns and computation of dispersal distances, retention and exchange. LPT output can also be used to construct a flow network, by abstracting starting and ending locations as nodes connected by links. This network can be analyzed using network theory, which gives us a deeper understanding of the system dynamics, for example how populations of a species are sustained by interconnectedness. Network analysis can identify natural barriers to dispersal and also determine the importance of particular populations, which provides insight into resilience of the species in any geographic area. Advances will be made in 3 critical strategic priorities for marine conservation in Canada: improving underlying modeling capacity for mathematically characterizing and predicting ocean connectivity; connectivity among populations of key commercial, invasive and at-risk species in the Northwest Atlantic; evaluation of the efficacy of the Marine Protected Area (MPA) network under development for Atlantic Canada. The modelling I develop will help Fisheries and Oceans Canada in designing and monitoring MPAs, implementing new sustainable fisheries regulations, determining measures to protect species at risk and mitigating the spread of aquatic invasive species. Theoreticians will benefit from the mathematical analytic techniques we develop, which haven't yet been applied in a conservation and management context. Trainees will get hands-on experience with real world applications in a supportive and inclusive work environment. They will acquire the quantitative skills and multi-disciplinary knowledge desperately needed to meet marine resource modeling needs and they will be globally employable across a range of sectors.