Abstract
Several marine ecosystems under anthropogenic pressure have experienced shifts from one ecological state to another. In the central Baltic Sea, the regime shift of the 1980s has been associated with food-web reorganization and redirection of energy flow pathways. These long-term dynamics from 1974 to 2006 have been simulated here using a food-web model forced by climate and fishing. Ecological network analysis was performed to calculate indices of ecosystem change. The model replicated the regime shift. The analyses of indicators suggested that the system's resilience was higher prior to 1988 and lower thereafter. The ecosystem topology also changed from a web-like structure to a linearized food-web.
Publication types
-
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
MeSH terms
-
Animals
-
Biomass
-
Ecosystem*
-
Food Chain
-
Models, Theoretical*
-
Oceans and Seas*
Grants and funding
The study has been carried out with financial support from the EU 7th Framework Project KnowSeas (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number 226675 and the Swedish FORMAS project “Regime Shifts in the Baltic Sea Ecosystem-Modelling Complex Adaptive Ecosystems and Governance Implications”. Further, the research leading to these results has received funding from the Baltic Ecosystem Adaptive Management (BEAM) program funded by Swedish FORMAS, and from the Norden Top-level Research Initiative sub-programme ‘Effect Studies and Adaptation to Climate Change’ through the Nordic Centre for Research on Marine Ecosystems and Resources under Climate Change (NorMER). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.