Dr. Anna Birkenbach joins the Northeast U.S. Climate Integrated Modeling (NCLIM) Initiative as co-PI on a newly awarded NOAA Climate and Fisheries Adaptation (CAFA) grant. Dr. Birkenbach and a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Maine, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth, and NOAA will develop tools to inform marine resource decision-making under projected climate change in the Northeast U.S. shelf ecosystem.
The CAFA Program is a partnership between the NOAA Research Climate Program Office and the NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology that supports “targeted research to promote adaptation and resilience of the nation’s valuable fisheries and fisheries-dependent communities in a changing climate.”
NCLIM is one of just five national projects focused on climate-integrated modeling and the only one focused on the Northeast. Under the new $1.2 million grant, the NCLIM team will test climate adaptation strategies and their socioeconomic impacts by: 1) linking climate, ecosystem, and human dimensions models, 2) simulation testing the performance of climate adaptation strategies, and 3) developing models to support climate adaptation scenarios. Dr. Birkenbach will model the fishing fleet’s behavioral responses to climate-induced changes to the abundance and distribution of fish stocks in the region, along with community-level impacts that may result from redistribution of landings.
Jon Hare, the director of the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center said: “The NCLIM project will develop and test the next generation of tools we need for effective fisheries management in a changing climate. NOAA Fisheries is very pleased to partner with the multidisciplinary NCLIM team to advance climate-informed stock assessments and adaptation strategies to support sustainable fisheries and fishing communities in the Northeast.”