8 research outputs found
Five key attributes can increase marine protected areas performance for small-scale fisheries management
Marine protected areas (MPAs) have largely proven to be effective tools for conserving marine ecosystem, while socio-economic benefits generated by MPAs to fisheries are still under debate. Many MPAs embed a no-take zone, aiming to preserve natural populations and ecosystems, within a buffer zone where potentially sustainable activities are allowed. Small-scale fisheries (SSF) within buffer zones can be highly beneficial by promoting local socio-economies. However, guidelines to successfully manage SSFs within MPAs, ensuring both conservation and fisheries goals, and reaching a win-win scenario, are largely unavailable. From the peer-reviewed literature, grey-literature and interviews, we assembled a unique database of ecological, social and economic attributes of SSF in 25 Mediterranean MPAs. Using random forest with Boruta algorithm we identified a set of attributes determining successful SSFs management within MPAs. We show that fish stocks are healthier, fishermen incomes are higher and the social acceptance of management practices is fostered if five attributes are present (i.e. high MPA enforcement, presence of a management plan, fishermen engagement in MPA management, fishermen representative in the MPA board, and promotion of sustainable fishing). These findings are pivotal to Mediterranean coastal communities so they can achieve conservation goals while allowing for profitable exploitation of fisheries resources
The WOCE–era 3–D Pacific Ocean circulation and heat budget
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Progress In Oceanography 82 (2009): 281-325, doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2009.08.002.To address questions concerning the intensity and spatial structure of the 3–dimensional
circulation within the Pacific Ocean and the associated advective and diffusive property flux
divergences, data from approximately 3000 high–quality hydrographic stations collected on
40 zonal and meridional cruises have been merged into a physically consistent model. The
majority of the stations were occupied as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment
(WOCE), which took place in the 1990s. These data are supplemented by a few pre–WOCE
surveys of similar quality, and time–averaged direct–velocity and historical hydrographic
measurements about the equator.
An inverse box model formalism is employed to estimate the absolute along–isopycnal
velocity field, the magnitude and spatial distribution of the associated diapycnal flow and
the corresponding diapycnal advective and diffusive property flux divergences. The resulting
large–scale WOCE Pacific circulation can be described as two shallow overturning cells
at mid– to low latitudes, one in each hemisphere, and a single deep cell which brings abyssal
waters from the Southern Ocean into the Pacific where they upwell across isopycnals and
are returned south as deep waters. Upwelling is seen to occur throughout most of the basin
with generally larger dianeutral transport and greater mixing occurring at depth. The derived
pattern of ocean heat transport divergence is compared to published results based
on air–sea flux estimates. The synthesis suggests a strongly east/west oriented pattern of
air–sea heat flux with heat loss to the atmosphere throughout most of the western basins,
and a gain of heat throughout the tropics extending poleward through the eastern basins.
The calculated meridional heat transport agrees well with previous hydrographic estimates.
Consistent with many of the climatologies at a variety of latitudes as well, our meridional
heat transport estimates tend toward lower values in both hemispheres.This work was funded by National Science Foundation grants OCE–9710102, OCE–
9712209 and OCE–0079383, and also benefited from work on closely related projects funded
by NSF grants OCE–0223421 and OCE–0623261, and NOAA grant NA17RJ1223 funded
through CICOR. For G.C.J. NASA funding came under Order W–19,314