Tag: Modeling

Health of killer whales examined through Bayesian network modeling and informed predictions

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. Qualitative network modeling, as shown in the previous post in Our Water Ways, is focused on actions that create either positive or negative results for actors in the model. […]

Researchers use a qualitative network model to test ways to boost production at shellfish farms

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. The skeletal beginnings of nearly all models is a conceptual understanding of the basic workings of the system being studied: Who are the important actors, and what are their […]

Before supercomputers, a structural model helped scientists predict currents in Puget Sound

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. One of the first working models of Puget Sound was a scaled-down concrete reproduction of the regional topography, with actual water running through channels, around islands and into bays, […]

Six things that people should know about ecosystem modeling and virtual experiments

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The Puget Sound Institute is facilitating a series of online workshops and discussions to explore the technical uncertainties related to the science of Puget Sound water quality. As part of the project, we are publishing informational blogs and articles, including this look at how computer models are becoming increasingly important to our understanding of the natural world. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. By Christopher Dunagan If you are planning a hike, picnic or other outdoor activity, it might be wise to take a look at the local […]

Modeling “the blob” in the Salish Sea

Map showing a marine heat wave known as "the blob" which spread across the northeastern Pacific Ocean from 2014 to 2016. Image: Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory, Data: Coral Reef Watch
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In late 2013, a marine heatwave that scientists dubbed “the blob” began warming the ocean throughout the Northeast Pacific, causing temperatures to rise almost 3°C above normal. The disruption severely depressed salmon returns. Whales, sea lions and seabirds starved, and warm water creatures were suddenly being spotted off the coast of Alaska. In Puget Sound, temperatures also jumped, but the effects of the blob here proved difficult to study because of the natural variability of the Salish Sea and the heavy influence of freshwater mixing and circulation in the waterbody. Recently, computer simulations from our partners at the Salish Sea Modeling […]

Introducing DORA Explorer

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Whether on land or in the sea, oxygen is critical for sustaining life. Healthy ecosystems depend on it, and the amount of dissolved oxygen in marine environments is one of the ways that scientists measure water quality. Both the research community and the regulatory authorities rely on complex computer models of the Salish Sea to predict dissolved oxygen levels, and key mechanistic drivers of water quality change, such as Nitrogen (N), and Net Primary Production (NPP). Now, the University of Washington Puget Sound Institute and the Salish Sea Modeling Center […]

PSI is hiring for a new postdoc position

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PSI is seeking a postdoctoral research scientist to focus on modeling the connections between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in Puget Sound. The full job announcement is available below. University of Washington Postdoctoral Research Scientist Modeling Terrestrial-Aquatic Linkages in Puget Sound The Puget Sound Institute, a University of Washington research center located in Tacoma (www.pugetsoundinstitute.org), is seeking a postdoctoral research scientist who focuses on modeling the connections between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, especially how the built environment controls the movement of water, nutrients, and chemical contaminants into adjacent surface waters.  This […]

Marc Mangel joins PSI

PSI senior research scientist Marc Mangel.
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By Jeff Rice How many fish are in the Salish Sea? It’s an impossible question that drives the Puget Sound Institute’s newest senior scientist Marc Mangel.  Mangel has spent his career working on fish and fisheries issues and uses mathematical models to answer critical questions about species such as their population numbers and population health. He joins PSI this month as an affiliate professor at the University of Washington Tacoma where he will focus on a range of subjects related to species such as salmon and forage fish. Mangel comes […]

How herring learn from their elders

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Young Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) learn migration behavior by joining up with older fish, according to a new paper co-authored by Puget Sound Institute Lead Ecosystem Ecologist Tessa Francis. The paper, published this month in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, showed how this behavior leads to greater spatial variability in biomass, and that commercial fishing could disproportionately affect some herring populations. Citation: Alec D MacCall, Tessa B Francis, André E Punt, Margaret C Siple, Derek R Armitage, Jaclyn S Cleary, Sherri C Dressel, R Russ Jones, Harvey Kitka, Lynn […]

PSI will host a wide variety of sessions and panels at the 2018 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

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The announcements are in and Puget Sound Institute researchers will be chairing or co-chairing at least five different special sessions at next year’s Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference in Seattle. The sessions will include subjects as varied as Contaminants of Emerging Concern, microplastics, Pacific herring, ecosystem modeling and the potential influence of the region’s technology industry on Salish Sea recovery. Watch this space in the coming months for more details on these sessions and for in-depth coverage of the conference as it develops.