Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Great Lakes – Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The US Geological Survey is offering a research project to a CESU Partner to study climatic influences on fish recruitment in Lake Erie. In fisheries science, “the recruitment problem” describes the phenomenon in which fish recruitment can vary considerably between years without large differences in spawning stock size. Recruitment variability, and a lack of understanding, limits the fisheries managers ability to predict population sizes and set fishing limits that balance conservation risks and fishery performance. As such, population assessments are often sensitive to recruitment process specifications, limiting their usefulness to managers. Understanding the relationships between fish recruitment and abiotic factors is necessary to effectively forecast fish population dynamics. In the Laurentian Great Lakes, factors such as lake elevation, ice cover extent and duration, precipitation timing and extent, and extreme wind and seiche events have been identified or hypothesized as potential influencers of fish recruitment. Shifts in these macro-scale abiotic factors may differentially affect recruitment across reproductive guilds. Management actions aimed at preservation of biodiversity in Lake Erie could benefit from population assessments that can predict community level recruitment under projected climate scenarios.