Description: The ability of management strategies to achieve the fishery management goals are impacted by environmental variation and, therefore, also by global climate change. Management strategies can be modified to use environmental data using the "dynamic B 0 " concept, and changing the set of years used to define biomass reference points. Two approaches have been developed to apply management strategy evaluation to evaluate the impact of environmental variation on the performance of management strategies. The "mechanistic approach" estimates the relationship between the environment and elements of the population dynamics of the fished species and makes predictions for population trends using the outputs from global climate models. In contrast, the "empirical approach" examines possible broad scenarios without explicitly identifying mechanisms. Many reviewed studies have found that modifying management strategies to include environmental factors does not improve the ability to achieve management goals much, if at all, and only if the manner in which these factors drive the system is well known. As such, until the skill of stock projection models improves, it seems more appropriate to consider the implications of plausible broad forecasts related to how biological parameters may change in the future as a way to assess the robustness of management strategies, rather than attempting specific predictions per se .

Description: Welcomme, R. L. 2011. An overview of global catch statistics for inland fish. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 1751–1756. The reported global inland fish catch passed 10 million tonnes in 2008, after almost linear growth from the early 1950s. The rise coincides with an increasing number of reports of falling catches resulting from environmental degradation. It is thought that catches from inland waters were underreported in the past because of constraints on collecting the relevant data. National approaches to data collection are not generally comparable and their accuracy not usually assessed. National data processing and reporting should be audited, and training undertaken to harmonize these activities. The apparently bigger catches probably result from better reporting of actual catches rather than any increase in the amount of fish landed. Current data are sufficient only for a general overview of global inland catches of fish, rather than for the detailed analysis needed for management, policy formulation, and the valuation of inland fisheries. There is a need for improved approaches to data collection and for historical catches to be corrected to account for changes in methodologies and reporting procedures.

Description:    Persistently high activity concentrations of radioactive Cs-137 ( T 1/2  = 30.17 a) in various animals and fruits originating from Bavarian forest ecosystems suggest that the contamination of soils in these ecosystems is still critical even decades after the severe inputs following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Aware of the fact, that such inputs are a global threat that can re-emerge at any time, a new monitoring network was established in cooperation with the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Public Health, to enhance the value of long-term radioprotection strategies in forests. Based on the investigation of 48 forest sites throughout the entire state territory, the project delivers a total of 889 gamma spectrometric records and demonstrates the current Cs-137 contamination situation of Bavarian forest soils, providing a valuable update on the residual contamination levels and thus a comprehensive inventory for any future radioprotection management. First results of this project are presented hereby. The total Cs-137 areal activity densities in Bavarian forest soils currently vary between 640 and 61,166 Bq m − ², with the peak areal activity density of each profile being located in the uppermost, humus rich mineral A-horizon in 68 % of all cases. Moreover, the results detect a positive correlation of humus thickness and relative areal Cs-137 activity density in humus horizons ( R ² = 0.50), validating previous findings on that topic by means of a very comprehensive data set across 2.56 Mio ha forest stands by showing that humus bodies 〉7.5 cm still contain at least 50 % of the total areal topsoil activity density. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s10342-012-0626-5 Authors Jennifer Winkelbauer, Department of Geomorphology and Soil Science, Technische Universität München, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany Jörg Völkel, Department of Geomorphology and Soil Science, Technische Universität München, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany Matthias Leopold, Department of Geomorphology and Soil Science, Technische Universität München, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany Kerstin Hürkamp, Institute of Radiation Protection, Helmholtz-Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, München-Neuherberg, Germany Rudolf Dehos, Department of Radioprotection and Radioecology, Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Public Health, Munich, Germany Journal European Journal of Forest Research Online ISSN 1612-4677 Print ISSN 1612-4669

Description: Wigand, L. A., Klinger, T., and Logsdon, M. G. 2013. Patterns in groundfish abundance along the Eastern Bering Sea outer continental margin. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 1181–1197. Place-based management approaches require understanding the spatial arrangement and interaction of elements. To address this need, we explored the utility of spatial-pattern analysis to understand the distribution of groundfish in the Eastern Bering Sea outer continental margin. We divided this region into discrete geomorphological units to explore spatial pattern on a range of scales. We used groundfish catch per unit effort (cpue) trawl survey data collected in four years to quantify spatial autocorrelation. Global statistics indicated that groundfish cpue was dominated by clusters of low values in all years. Local statistics showed that clusters of low values in groundfish cpue were confined to the southern portion of the study area, while clusters of high values varied across the study area. Outliers were most commonly found in close proximity to the shelf–slope break. Our results reveal the existence of spatial dependency in groundfish abundance and demonstrate that spatial analysis can be used to better understand spatial arrangements of these and other living marine resources, and to quantify and validate the local ecological knowledge of resource users. Our results indicate the feasibility of using spatially explicit tools to improve integration and visualization of marine environmental data for purposes of management and conservation.