Bracketing Uncertainty for Managers with Ecosystem Models for the Chesapeake Bay

Being aware of model parameter and structure uncertainty is necessary for understanding the expected outcome of management actions.  Methods of dealing with model uncertainty are disparately applied around the Chesapeake Bay research and resource management community.  The communication of these concepts and study results to managers is likewise disparate.  

Models are important as frameworks for identifying management priorities and research needs.  Models are needed to understand the populations and to simplify the complex dynamics of ecosystems that the decision-makers seek to manage.  Research studies and monitoring performed can ultimately help to reduce the parameter and structure uncertainty in model outputs.  Thus, the most effective use of models and their results will both help managers understand the dynamics of the resources that they manage and identify research priorities that will improve the precision of model results; ideally, this process improves the reliability of model assessments and forecasts.  However, the approaches used by scientists to address uncertainty in their modeling efforts vary widely, and these methods must be communicated effectively to resource managers if managers are to be able to correctly interpret model results for effective decision making. 

Here we present the approaches currently being applied in the Chesapeake Bay to incorporate ecosystem based information into the fishery management process, along with some of the feedback provided to us from the managers we aim to support with this information.