Administrator – Ecopath International Research Association

Ecopath with Ecosim and Ecospace modelling courses are back at ICM

Administrator — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:05:57 +0000

During the week of the 11^th to the 15^th of December 2023, ICM hosted, once again, an ecosystem modelling course to teach participants from different institutions around the world how to use modelling techniques to study the effects of human activities and climate change on marine ecosystems.

20 participants from 13 countries (Romania, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Holland, Greece, Italy and France) got together to learn about the Ecopath with Ecosim food web modelling approach (EwE, https://www.ecopath.org). This course, organized under 6 European and National projects (Ges4Seas, ActNow, MarinePlan, FutureMares, EcoScope, Oceans+, and ProOceans), aimed to help participants with their modelling-related tasks, work packages and deliverables.

A three-day introductory course was followed by a two-day advanced course. The introductory course discussed basic concepts and procedures modelling aquatic ecosystems using the EwE approach. Participants were provided with the principles behind EwE, and how to design, parameterize and analyze an ecological model. Introductory concepts of the temporal module Ecosim and the spatial-temporal module Ecospace were presented. The advanced course discussed in-depth principles of Ecospace. Special focus was paid to how to use EwE to study the impacts of cumulative stressors, including the impact of climate change, and the effects of alternative management options of marine resources to move towards adaptation and mitigation of human activities under global change.

The course was taught by a team of core scientists behind EwE: Villy Christensen (University of British Columbia, Canada), Jeroen Steenbeek (Ecopath International Initiative, Spain) and Marta Coll (Institute of Marine Science, Spain). Three teaching assistants completed the team: Elena Lloret and Dorota Szalaj, from ICM, and Riikka Puntilla-Dodd, from Åbo Akademi University (Finland).

Ecosystem modelling courses were frequently taught at ICM before 2019, and starting with this course, the intention is to organize them again on annual basis. “These courses are a great opportunity for the scientific community to get introduced to one of the most applied ecological modelling tools in the world, while meeting participants from all over the world and learn about the recent developments of the approach” highlights Marta Coll, from ICM.

Villy Christensen, UBC, states “It is a great pleasure to be back at ICM-CSIC to teach this Ecopath with Ecosim course. There is a high demand for this kind of courses and participants are really engaged and keen to learn“. “With it’s fantastic location and accessibility, we can turn the ICM-CSIC into the heart of Ecopath with Ecosim training in Europe”, says Jeroen Steenbeek.

The EcoOcean modelling complex has now an official home at ecopathinternational.org

Administrator — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 20:26:54 +0000

EcoOcean is a spatially and temporally explicit mechanistic marine ecosystem modelling (MEM) complex of the global ocean, that unifies the consideration of spatial-temporal food-web dynamics ranging from primary producers to top predators with the impacts of environmental change and worldwide fisheries. In collaboration with UBC-IOF (Canada), CSIC-ICM (Spain) and MountainSoft (Canada) we have been pushing the modelling complex into projects such as TRIATLAS and ProOceans, and global collaborations such as ISIMIP. For more details please visit https://ecopathinternational.org/ecooceans

The Ocean Decade: A True Ecosystem Modeling Challenge

Administrator — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 08:22:04 +0000

Our manuscript about modelling challenges for the Ocean Decade is out

We invite you to see our latest contribution in Frontiers of Marine Science. Here, we challenge the marine ecosystem modeling community to address how to: (i) enable ocean managers and decision-makers to use their science, (ii) communicate their science, and most importantly (iii) ensure co-design of their science to achieve sustainable development. For this, we define ecosystem models as those that span physical and human drivers of change in the full ecosystem from plankton to top predators.

Sorry, no publications matched your criteria.

EcoOcean v2 paper has been accepted

Administrator — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 14:53:42 +0000

Our manuscript about the next major update to EcoOcean, v2, is out now!

In this work, we present EcoOcean v2, an updated version of our spatial-temporal ecosystem modelling complex of the global ocean that spans food-web dynamics from primary producers to top predators. We extended the ability of EcoOcean ability to reproduce spatial-temporal ecosystem dynamics by linking species productivity, distributions, and trophic interactions to the impacts of climate change and worldwide fisheries. Novel additions include the use of native range, spatial stratification of functional group species composition, and temperature-dependent metabolism.

Coll, Marta; Steenbeek, Jeroen; Pennino, Maria Grazia; Buszowski, Joe; Kaschner, Kristin; Lotze, Heike K.; Rousseau, Yannick; Tittensor, Derek P.; Walters, Carl; Watson, Reg Alan; Christensen, Villy

Advancing global ecological modelling capabilities to simulate future trajectories of change in marine ecosystems Journal Article

In: Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 7, 2020, ISSN: 2296-7745, (Publisher: Frontiers).

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@article{coll_advancing_2020,

title = {Advancing global ecological modelling capabilities to simulate future trajectories of change in marine ecosystems},

author = {Marta Coll and Jeroen Steenbeek and Maria Grazia Pennino and Joe Buszowski and Kristin Kaschner and Heike K. Lotze and Yannick Rousseau and Derek P. Tittensor and Carl Walters and Reg Alan Watson and Villy Christensen},

url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.567877/abstract},

doi = {10.3389/fmars.2020.567877},

issn = {2296-7745},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-01},

urldate = {2020-08-13},

journal = {Frontiers in Marine Science},

volume = {7},

publisher = {Frontiers},

abstract = {Considerable effort is being deployed to predict the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the ocean’s biophysical environment, biodiversity, and natural resources to better understand how marine ecosystems and provided services to humans are likely to change and explore alternative pathways and options. We present an updated version of EcoOcean (v2), a spatial-temporal ecosystem modelling complex of the global ocean that spans food-web dynamics from primary producers to top predators. Advancements include an enhanced ability to reproduce spatial-temporal ecosystem dynamics by linking species productivity, distributions, and trophic interactions to the impacts of climate change and worldwide fisheries. The updated modelling platform is used to simulate past and future scenarios of change, where we quantify the impacts of alternative configurations of the ecological model, responses to climate-change scenarios, and the additional impacts of fishing. Climate-change scenarios are obtained from two Earth-System Models (ESMs, GFDL-ESM2M and IPSL-CMA5-LR) and two contrasting emission pathways (RCPs 2.6 and 8.5) for historical (1950-2005) and future (2006-2100) periods. Standardized ecological indicators and biomasses of selected species groups are used to compare simulations. Results show how future ecological trajectories are sensitive to alternative configurations of EcoOcean, and yield moderate differences when looking at ecological indicators and larger differences for biomasses of species groups. Ecological trajectories are also sensitive to environmental drivers from alternative ESM outputs and RCPs, and show spatial variability and more severe changes when IPSL and RCP 8.5 are used. Under a non-fishing configuration, larger organisms show decreasing trends, while smaller organisms show mixed or increasing results. Fishing intensifies the negative effects predicted by climate change, again stronger under IPSL and RCP 8.5, which results in stronger biomass declines for species already losing under climate change, or dampened positive impacts for those increasing. Several species groups that win under climate change become losers under combined impacts, while only a few (small benthopelagic fish and cephalopods) species are projected to show positive biomass changes under cumulative impacts. EcoOcean v2 can contribute to the quantification of cumulative impact assessments of multiple stressors and of plausible ocean-based solutions to prevent, mitigate and adapt to global change.},

note = {Publisher: Frontiers},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

Considerable effort is being deployed to predict the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the ocean’s biophysical environment, biodiversity, and natural resources to better understand how marine ecosystems and provided services to humans are likely to change and explore alternative pathways and options. We present an updated version of EcoOcean (v2), a spatial-temporal ecosystem modelling complex of the global ocean that spans food-web dynamics from primary producers to top predators. Advancements include an enhanced ability to reproduce spatial-temporal ecosystem dynamics by linking species productivity, distributions, and trophic interactions to the impacts of climate change and worldwide fisheries. The updated modelling platform is used to simulate past and future scenarios of change, where we quantify the impacts of alternative configurations of the ecological model, responses to climate-change scenarios, and the additional impacts of fishing. Climate-change scenarios are obtained from two Earth-System Models (ESMs, GFDL-ESM2M and IPSL-CMA5-LR) and two contrasting emission pathways (RCPs 2.6 and 8.5) for historical (1950-2005) and future (2006-2100) periods. Standardized ecological indicators and biomasses of selected species groups are used to compare simulations. Results show how future ecological trajectories are sensitive to alternative configurations of EcoOcean, and yield moderate differences when looking at ecological indicators and larger differences for biomasses of species groups. Ecological trajectories are also sensitive to environmental drivers from alternative ESM outputs and RCPs, and show spatial variability and more severe changes when IPSL and RCP 8.5 are used. Under a non-fishing configuration, larger organisms show decreasing trends, while smaller organisms show mixed or increasing results. Fishing intensifies the negative effects predicted by climate change, again stronger under IPSL and RCP 8.5, which results in stronger biomass declines for species already losing under climate change, or dampened positive impacts for those increasing. Several species groups that win under climate change become losers under combined impacts, while only a few (small benthopelagic fish and cephalopods) species are projected to show positive biomass changes under cumulative impacts. EcoOcean v2 can contribute to the quantification of cumulative impact assessments of multiple stressors and of plausible ocean-based solutions to prevent, mitigate and adapt to global change.

May 2020 – EwE version 6.6.1 released

Administrator — Fri, 01 May 2020 14:27:48 +0000

We’ve released Ecopath with Ecosim version 6.6.1 with a number of bug fixes. Proceed to downloads

November 2018 – Introductory and Advanced EwE courses

Administrator — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 14:42:00 +0000

Dates: 5-9 November 2018. Location: CCMAR, Faro Portugal. Teachers: Jeroen Steenbeek, Natalia Serpetti

Two courses, back-to-back in Faro, Portugal: a three-day introductory course, and a two-day specialized course, on modeling with Ecopath with Ecosim:

INTRODUCTION TO FOOD WEB MODELLING WITH ECOPATH WITH ECOSIM
ADVANCED ECOSIM AND ECOSPACE

The introductory course discussed basic concepts and modelling procedures of aquatic ecosystems using the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) food web modeling approach. Participants were provided with the principles behind EwE (http://www.ecopath.org), and how to design, parameterize and analyze an ecological model with Ecopath. Introductory concepts of the temporal module Ecosim and the spatial-temporal module Ecospace will be presented.

The specialized course discussed in-depth principles of Ecosim fitting to time series, and an introduction to Ecospace, the spatial-temporal module of EwE. Special focus was paid to Ecospace habitat modelling and the usage of the spatial temporal data framework.

For more information, see the course website at CCMAR

June 2016 – Course “Qualitative Mathematical Modelling of Complex Systems”

Administrator — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 14:50:55 +0000

Date: 3 June 2016. Location: ICM-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain. Teacher: Jeffrey Dambacher (CSIRO)

Qualitative mathematical modelling was introduced as a means to understand and predict the dynamics of complex biological and socio-economic systems. The technique poses the question: if all we know of a system is the general nature of relationships between species and environmental and human variables, but not the precise intensity of these interactions, then what do we know?

It turns out that we know not everything, but quite a lot. Qualitative mathematical modelling describes complex systems through only the sign (0, +, -) of the effect or interaction between variables, and thus can easily include variables and processes that are important, yet difficult to measure.

Calculations of system stability and predictions of perturbation response proceed through analysis of the feedback properties of a system. While model predictions are imprecise, there are nonetheless rigorously derived and readily testable.

May 2016 – Course “Modelling aquatic ecosystems with Ecopath, Ecosim and Ecospace”

Administrator — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:52:40 +0000

Dates: 30 May – 3 June 2016

Teachers: Marta Coll, Villy Christensen, Isabel Palomera and Jeroen Steenbeek

Location: ICM-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

This course introduced basic concepts and modelling procedures of aquatic ecosystems. Participants were provided with the principles behind EwE (www.ecopath.org), and how to design, parameterize and analyze an ecological model with Ecopath. Introductory concepts of the temporal module Ecosim and the spatial-temporal module Ecospace were presented.

March 2016 – Course “Basic use of Ecopath with Ecosim”

Administrator — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:03:35 +0000

Dates: 7-11 March 2016

Location: CSIRO, Hobart, Australia

Teachers: Villy Christensen, Marta Coll, Jeroen Steenbeek, and Carl Walters.

This basic course of the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) modeling approach introduced the current capabilities of the EwE desktop software (www.ecopath.org).

This course provided a birds-eye view of all that the EwE modelling approach has to offer:

Introduction to the foundation of the EwE approach and a discussion of basic parameterizations;
Advanced parameterization of EwE models through online databases such as FishBase and WoRMS;
Basic temporal modeling with Ecosim;
Advanced temporal modeling such as fitting models to data and driving models with external drivers;
Basic spatial-temporal modeling using the original Ecospace model;
Advanced spatial-temporal modeling using new habitat capacity model;
Demonstration how to drive the Ecospace model with varying time series of maps;
Introduction to programming with the Ecopath with Ecosim source code.

The course was structured between presentations and computer time. Participants are invited to use their own models for the course

Course website : CSIRO event

Sept 2015 – Course “Introduction to Ecopath with Ecosim”

Administrator — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:04:53 +0000

Location: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande Do Norte (Brazil, Natal)

Dates: 14-18 September 2015

Teachers: Marta Coll, Jeroen Steenbeek, Ronaldo Angelini (UFRN)

This basic course of the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) modeling approach introduced the current capabilities of the EwE desktop software (www.ecopath.org). Besides an introduction to the foundation of the EwE approach and a discussion of basic parameterizations, we introduced advanced features for parameterization of EwE models through online databases such as FishBase and WoRMS.

Advanced features of Ecosim, such as fitting models to data, and driving models with external drivers, were discussed. The original Ecospace model and the new habitat capacity model were introduced. Finally, an introduction how to program with the EwE source code was demonstrated. The course was structured between presentations and computer time. Local participants were invited to use their own models for the course. Participants by video conference attended the lectures. Lectures were given mostly during the morning.