Jonathan Reum

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA · Alaska Fisheries Science Center

The development of species recovery plans requires considering likely outcomes of different management interventions, but the complicating effects of climate change are rarely evaluated. We examined how qualitative network models (QNMs) can be deployed to support decision making when data, time, and funding limitations restrict use of more demandin...

Characterization of uncertainty (variance) in ecosystem projections under climate change is still rare despite its importance for informing decision-making and prioritizing research. We developed an ensemble modeling framework to evaluate the relative importance of different uncertainty sources for food web projections of the eastern Bering Sea (EB...

Ontogenetic diet shifts are pervasive in food webs, but rules governing their emergence and the implications for trophic cascades are only partly understood. Recent theoretical advances in multispecies size spectrum models (MSSMs) predict that the emergence of ontogenetic diet shifts are driven primarily by size‐selective predation and changes in t...

Food web projections are critical for evaluating potential risks to ecosystems and fisheries under global warming. The temperature dependence of biological processes and regional differences in food web structure are two important sources of uncertainty and variation in climate forced projections of fish communities, but we do not know their magnit...

Qualitative Network Models (QNMs), Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), and Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) have been proposed as methods to formalize conceptual models of social–ecological systems and project system responses to management interventions or environmental change. To explore how these different methods might influence conclusions about syste...

Attributing variability in fish demographic processes to environmental conditions is helpful when assessing population status and forecasting changes in ecosystem function. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis has long been used to explore variability in physical processes, but has been only recently employed to study variability in biologi...

As ecosystem-based fisheries management becomes more ingrained into the way fisheries agencies do business, a need for ecosystem and multispecies models arises. Yet ecosystems are complex, and model uncertainty can be large. Model ensembles have historically been used in other disciplines to address model uncertainty. To understand the benefits and...

Climate change is impacting fisheries worldwide with uncertain outcomes for food and nutritional security. Using management strategy evaluations for key US fisheries in the eastern Bering Sea we find that Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) measures forestall future declines under climate change over non-EBFM approaches. Yet, benefits are s...

Stepwise methodology for determining climate-informed multispecies biological references points for sustainable fishery harvest. This approach follows the status quo North Pacific Marine Fishery Council reviewed multispecies assessment methodology and represents a precautionary approach that minimizes inflation of Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC)...

Identifying feeding patterns of large-bodied predators is necessary for predicting their potential effects on food web dynamics. However, diet information from stomach contents can be impractical to obtain because required sample sizes can be prohibitively large. In contrast, diet estimates obtained using Bayesian stable isotope mixing models requi...

The Alaska Climate Integrated Modeling (ACLIM) project represents a comprehensive, multi-year, interdisciplinary effort to characterize and project climate-driven changes to the eastern Bering Sea (EBS) ecosystem, from physics to fishing communities. Results from the ACLIM project are being used to understand how different regional fisheries manage...

Food web structure and dynamics depend on relationships between body sizes of predators and their prey. Species‐based and community‐wide estimates of preferred and realized predator–prey mass ratios (PPMR) are required inputs to size‐based size spectrum models of marine communities, food webs, and ecosystems. Here, we clarify differences between PP...

Sharks are a diverse group of mobile predators that forage across varied spatial scales and have the potential to influence food web dynamics. The ecological consequences of recent declines in shark biomass may extend across broader geographic ranges if shark taxa display common behavioural traits. By tracking the original site of photosynthetic fi...

Stable isotopes are used to address a wide range of ecological questions and can help researchers and managers better understand the movement and trophic ecology of sharks. Here, we review how shark studies from the Northeast Pacific Ocean (NEP) have employed stable isotopes to estimate trophic level and diet composition and infer movement and habi...

The complexity of ecosystem-based management (EBM) of natural resources has given rise to research frameworks such as integrated ecosystem assessments (IEA) that pull together large amounts of diverse information from physical, ecological, and social domains. Conceptual models are valuable tools for assimilating and simplifying this information to...

Expansion of the shellfish aquaculture industry has the potential to affect the structure and dynamics of coastal estuarine foodwebs. To better understand foodweb trade-offs, we incorporated both trophic and non-trophic interactions (e.g. habitat facilitation and predator refuge) into a foodweb model of central Puget Sound to predict the effects of...

We applied Qualitative Network Models (QNMs) to evaluate the potential community effects of ocean acidification (OA) in a major shellfish-producing estuary (Willapa Bay, Washington). QNMs are well-suited to data-limited systems and only require information on the sign (+, -, 0) of the interactions between species. We examined qualitative prediction...

Predicting the effects of aquaculture development for coastal ecosystems remains challenging, particularly for data-limited systems, and tools that account for complex ecological interactions are needed to support ecosystem approaches to aquaculture. Here, we used qualitative network models (QNMs) to examine the potential community effects of incre...

Nitrogen stable isotope ratios (δ(15) N) may be used to estimate community-level relationships between trophic level (TL) and body size in size-structured food webs and hence the mean predator to prey body mass ratio (PPMR). In turn, PPMR is used to estimate mean food chain length, trophic transfer efficiency, rates of change in abundance with body...

Stable isotopes (δ15N and δ13C) offer one representation of an individual’s trophic niche and are important tools for elucidating ecological patterns and testing a diversity of hypotheses. Because δ15N and δ13C values are often obtained from the same sample, they compose a bivariate response that researchers commonly analyze using multivariate stat...

Coastal upwelling regimes are some of the most productive ecosystems in the ocean but are also among the most vulnerable to ocean acidification (OA) due to naturally high background concentrations of CO2. Yet our ability to predict how these ecosystems will respond to additional CO2 resulting from anthropogenic emissions is poor. To help address th...

Stable isotopes (δ15N and δ13C) offer one representation of an individual’s trophic niche and are important tools for elucidating ecological patterns and testing a diversity of hypotheses. Because δ15N and δ13C values are often obtained from the same sample, they compose a bivariate response that researchers commonly analyze using multivariate stat...

Few studies to date have demonstrated widespread biological impacts of ocean acidification (OA) under conditions currently found in the natural environment. From a combined survey of physical and chemical water properties and biological sampling along the Washington-Oregon-California coast in August 2011, we show that large portions of the shelf wa...

Carbonate chemistry variability is often poorly characterized in coastal regions and patterns of covariation with other biologically important variables such as temperature, oxygen concentration, and salinity are rarely evaluated. This absence of information hampers the design and interpretation of ocean acidification experiments that aim to charac...

Carbonate chemistry variability is often poorly characterized in coastal regions and patterns of covariation with other biologically important variables such as temperature, oxygen concentration, and salinity are rarely evaluated. This absence of information hampers the design and interpretation of ocean acidification experiments that aim to charac...

Ecologists routinely set out to estimate the trophic position of individuals, populations, and species composing food webs, and nitrogen stable isotopes (δ(15)N) are a widely used proxy for trophic position. Although δ(15)N values are often sampled at the level of individuals, estimates and confidence intervals are frequently sought for aggregation...

Variation in growth and body size during critical life history stages can have important implications for life history schedules and survivorship. For Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), there is still debate as to whether juvenile body size is governed by density-dependent or -independent processes and few have evaluated whether the relative import...

Variation in growth and body size during critical life history stages can have important implications for life history schedules and survivorship. For Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), there is still debate as to whether juvenile body size is governed by density-dependent or -independent processes and few have evaluated whether the relative import...

We used variance decomposition to explore the importance of body size, sex, location, and sampling period as predictors of intrapopulation variation in 􏶉15N and 􏶉13C values in spiny dogWsh Squalus suckleyi from the Puget Sound–Strait of Georgia basin. Isotopes in two tissues with long (dorsal white muscle) and short (liver) isotopic turn- over rate...

Marine and freshwater food webs are strongly structured by size-dependent predator-prey interactions. Predator-prey body mass ratios (PPMR) are important parameters in size-based food web models, but studies evaluating the temporal stability of PPMR or its relationship to predator feeding modes are scant. Using a large data set of predator-prey pai...

We used variance decomposition to explore the importance of body size, sex, location, and sampling period as predictors of intrapopulation variation in δ15N and δ13C values in spiny dogfish Squalus suckleyi from the Puget Sound–Strait of Georgia basin. Isotopes in two tissues with long (dorsal white muscle) and short (liver) isotopic turnover rates...

Identifying key variables that underlie juvenile body size variation has important implications for individual growth trajectories, life history schedules, predation risk, and spawner size structure. For Pacific herring, debate remains over whether juvenile body size is governed by density-dependent or -independent processes and little work has eva...

Fjord estuaries are common along the northeast Pacific coastline, but little information is available on fish assemblage structure and its spatiotemporal variability. Here, we examined changes in diversity metrics, species biomasses, and biomass spectra (the distribution of biomass across body size classes) over three seasons (fall, winter, summer)...

We examined how local- and regional-scale environmental drivers affect patterns of abundance and recruitment in 2 abundant and ecologically significant forage fishes (Pacific herring Clupea pallasi and surf smelt Hypomesus pretiosus) in the Skagit River estuary (Puget Sound, Washington, USA). We identified associations between survey catch rates an...

We assessed species composition and relative biomass densities of large medusae (bell diameters larger than 4 cm) at four locations in Puget Sound, Washington, over two sampling periods (June and September). We specifically sampled sites in southern Hood Canal (near Hoodsport), northern Hood Canal (Hazel Point), southern Admiralty Inlet (Useless Ba...

Identification of food web linkages is a major aim in ecology because it provides basic information on trophic flows and the potential for interspecific interactions. In addition, policy and restoration measures mandated to conform to ecosystem-based management principals can benefit from information on temporal and spatial variability in community...