Responsibilities

• Supervision of Ph.D. students
• Member of coordination committee
• Work package leader WP4

Research Interest

• Modelling ecological and economic impact of El Niño
• Humboldt Current Upwelling System
• Invertebrate population dynamics
• Trophic modelling of coastal areas

Abstract

• My work seeks three main objectives:
• 1) Integrating project data and historical information into an interactive CENSOR data bank;
• 2) Fertilising the knowledge transfer within the interdisciplinary scientific consortium of CENSOR, and into society and public at large, and
• 3) Constructing conceptual and quantitative, ecosystem/resource - use models, as tools for an adaptive management of the aquatic resources of the South East Pacific region
• Through this work, I shall be involved with the coastal resource users, decision makers and other stakeholders of the coastal zone, through periodic meetings in Peru and Chile, and through an Internet discussion forum on ecological, economic and social issues, linked to the CENSOR database system.
• Ecosystem models shall be constructed and used for the dynamical simulation of the response of resource biomass to changes in fishing pressure and habitat conditions (e. g. control by predators, changing conditions in primary productivity). These models shall be linked to socio-economic models. Thus strategies for the adaptive and sustainable resource use within different habitats or sub-areas of the Humboldt Current System shall thereby be explored.
• Based on the above, guidelines for the sustainable use of the ecosystem and its resources shall then be formulated and disseminated (such as delimitation of non-take areas (reserves) for most critical habitats of important resources as well as optimal harvest levels or harvest periods).

Keywords

• Modelling, Energy flux, Community structure, Socio-economic assessment, use scenarios