Incorporating Eutrophication and Other Anthropogenic Stressors into a Popular Trophic Model (EwE)

Resource managers are often tasked with identifying and assessing the potential impacts of management actions on the biotic communities under their care.  When the management activities directly impact a single species of interest managers can turn to a variety of models to aid in their understanding of potential changes to that population. But as Ecosystem Based Management becomes more widely accepted managers will have to understand how proposed actions will impact entire biotic communities, through both direct and indirect mechanisms. Thus there is a need for ecosystem models that account for both trophic and non-trophic interactions, and that can be relatively easily used to assess a variety of management scenarios.  We reviewed the available literature regarding incorporation of eutrophication and other anthropogenic impacts into Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), one of the more widely used trophic ecosystem models.  We found a number of mechanisms of varying complexity have been used to include these stressors in the model, providing managers with a suite of options that can be used to complement their existing models as they seek to understand the impacts of human interactions with the natural environment.