Development of an Atlantis Model for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment in the Gulf of Mexico

An Atlantis end-to-end marine ecosystem model has been developed for the Gulf of Mexico to support Integrated Ecosystem Assessment.  We discuss model development, current applications and future directions.  Methodological papers to date describe novel statistical and numerical approaches for estimating initial biomass concentrations, diet relationships and population connectivity in Atlantis.  Atlantis was tuned to observational data in a historical reconstruction driven by fisheries, management and environmental time series.  Management statistics (e.g., maximum sustainable yield) are produced for exploited species that are comparable to similar metrics derived from single-species models.  Current applications of the model include evaluation of ecosystem indicators, management strategy evaluation of existing regulations under future climate change scenarios, and estimation of impacts and recovery time from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Future research will focus on using a model ensemble approach along with other ecosystem modeling approaches (OSMOSE and EwE) to bracket predictions.