University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses October 2019 TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR MARINE ECOSYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN BRAZIL AND NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES Beatriz dos Santos Dias University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Aquaculture and Fisheries Commons, and the Marine Biology Commons Recommended Citation dos Santos Dias, Beatriz, "TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR MARINE ECOSYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN BRAZIL AND NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1714. https://doi.org/10.7275/15232062 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1714 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. 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TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR MARINE ECOSYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN BRAZIL AND NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES A Dissertation Presented by BEATRIZ DOS SANTOS DIAS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment Of the requirement for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2019 Department of Environmental Conservation Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology © Copyright by Beatriz dos Santos Dias 2019 All Rights Reserved TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR MARINE ECOSYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN BRAZIL AND NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES A Dissertation Presented By BEATRIZ DOS SANTOS DIAS Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________________ Adrian Jordaan, Chair ____________________________________________ John T. Finn, Member ____________________________________________ Michael G. Frisk, Member ____________________________________________ Michelle D. Staudinger, Member __________________________________________ Curt Griffin, Department Head, Environmental Conservation __________________________________________ Timothy Randhir, Graduate Program Director, Environmental Conservation DEDICATION To my amazing family. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Adrian Jordaan, for believing in me, and for his mentorship and support throughout this journey. I also would like to thank my committee members Dr. Michael Frisk, Dr. Jack Finn and Dr. Michelle Staudinger for their insights and guidance on this project. Thank you to my dear collaborators both in the U.S. and Brazil, this work would not be possible without all my villages. I would like to thank the entire Environmental Conservation department professors and staff for their dedication, their open doors policy, and for helping me navigate in often than not calm seas. Thank you, Lori, Emily, Linda, and Carolyn. Thank you to the Jordaan lab and extended family, for their encouragement and their willingness to share knowledge and ideas. They are the best lab mates and friends that I could wish for. Thank you to my fellow graduate students (past and present), for building this amazing community. I also would like to thank my funding agency CAPES and the Science without Borders program, that gave me wings and the opportunity to achieve my greatest dream. A special thank you to Lenfest Ocean Program for funding the research. Thank you to the Department of Environmental Conservation for the fellowship award. Finally, I would like to thank my incredible Brazilian and American family (four- legged included) for all their patience, love, and encouragement. I am forever grateful. v ABSTRACT TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR MARINE ECOSYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN BRAZIL AND NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES SEPTEMBER 2019 BEATRIZ DOS SANTOS DIAS, B.S., FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF PARA M.S., AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR Ph.D. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Adrian Jordaan Anthropogenic interventions and actions upon the marine habitat pose threats to a range of species of economic and conservation concern. The dynamic nature of marine ecosystems offers a difficult challenge to incorporate spatial and temporal distributions of different species, and the interactions among species and human activities into a formal management framework. Each country has its own priorities when it comes to management of the marine resources (e.g. conservation, food security, sustainable fisheries, and optimization of revenue). Therefore, a key hurdle is to create tools adequate for use within an Ecosystem Approach to Management (EAM) and Ecosystem-based Management (EBM) framework, that meet local and regional needs. Models can provide insights regarding ecosystems dynamics and generate tools for management applications, including the estimation of optimal conditions and frameworks, assessing current conditions relative to baselines, exploring the effects of potential management decisions and delimiting areas where monitoring efforts of species vi of concern or “choke species” should be concentrated. The present work focuses on all these elements with the aim to provide modeling and visualization capacity to management decision making. My dissertation had two main objectives, divided in two case studies in distinct geographic and data availability settings. The first was to develop spatial models to promote the adequate monitoring of species of conservation concern (SOC) within a data- limited setting in two multiuse marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Amazon Delta, Northern Brazil by: 1) collecting SOC available data; 2) developing GIS-based suitability models; and 3) generating baseline knowledge for future management strategies of SOCs. The second objective was to study alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) role within a data- rich setting in the Northeast U.S. large marine ecosystem (NEUS LME) and the Gulf of Maine (GOM) marine ecosystem by: 1) developing food-web based ecosystem models; 2) assessing the impacts of anadromous forage fish restoration; 3) testing riverine and marine-based management strategies to promote their recovery. For the data-limited studies, I found that extreme data scarcity impeded our ability to develop a model for the Environmental Protection Area (EPA) of Algodoal- Maiandeua, Northern Brazil. However, it allowed us to show preliminary data of sea turtles’ observations and fixed fishing gears in the EPA, giving basis to the future develop of spatially explicit models. While for the second multiuse MPA, the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve (MER), we were able to successfully develop a spatial explicit suitability model focused on monitoring priority areas for SOCs. Our results show that 30% of the MER is under medium, high and extremely high monitoring priority, allowing more effective development of monitoring design for SOCs. vii For the data-rich setting, I found that the full restoration of alewife in the NEUS LME could lead to a 50% potential biomass increase for small pelagics, 26% for fisheries target species, and approximately 69% for SOCs. This provided a more stable picture for the middle trophic level forage species and lead to major potential biomass changes for SOCs. I also found that fishing effort reduction alone did little to promote alewife recovery in the GOM marine ecosystem. However, when river to ocean connectivity was added to fishing effort reductions. The alosine (alewife, blueback herring and American shad) group showed a major response. As a whole, my dissertation captures a range of management approaches from data-limited to data-rich systems, using modeling approaches to optimize decision making. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ v ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER 1. A BRIEF REVIEW OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL MODELS APPLIED TO MARINE ECOSYSTEMS...................................................................................... 1 Introduction............................................................................................................. 1 Marine Spatial Planning, and Marine Protected Areas as Conservation Tools............................................................................................................ 3 Ecosystem-Based Management................................................................... 5 2. SEA TURTLE RECORDS AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AREA OF ALGODOAL-MAIANDEUA, PARA STATE, BRAZIL................................ 9 3. IDENTIFICATION OF MONITORING PRIORITY AREAS FOR SPECIES OF CONCERN USING GIS-BASED FUZZY MODELS: THE CASE OF SOURE MARINE EXTRACTIVE RESERVE ON THE AMAZON COAST...................15 Introduction............................................................................................................15 Methodology.......................................................................................................... 18 Study Area................................................................................................