Gulf of Alaska Integrated
Ecosystem Research Program (GOA IERP)

The Gulf of Alaska (GOA) is one of the world’s most productive ocean regions. It sustains large animal populations and provides a way of life for many people.

The Alaska Current and the Alaska Coastal Current dominate the GOA. These are the strongest and most persistent currents found along either coast of North America. They function as pathways for organisms and the resources they depend on. The large embayment estuaries of the southeast island archipelago, Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords, Cook Inlet, and Shelikof Strait provide nursery and juvenile habitat for many species.

The value of an integrated ecosystem research program is that it brings together different disciplines to comprehensively attempt to answer complex ecological questions in the face of uncertainty and ecosystem change.

Like the BEST-BSIERP Bering Sea Project, the Gulf of of Alaska Project aims to determine and quantify processes that drive upper trophic level populations and to better understand observed and future variability therein as they affect key management issues in the North Pacific.

Above: The geographic scope of the Upper Trophic Level (UTL) component in the Gulf of Alaska. See larger image

Overarching question

The Gulf of Alaska IERP Implementation Plan is structured around this question:

How do environmental and anthropogenic processes, including climate change, affect trophic levels and dynamic linkages among trophic levels, with emphasis on fish and fisheries, marine mammals, and seabirds within the Gulf of Alaska?

A four-Component program

Implementation of the GOA IERP is structured around four separately competed components which will link together to form a fully integrated ecosystem study in the Gulf of Alaska.  The four components of this program are:

• Upper Trophic Level (UTL): The overall goal of this component focuses on identifying and quantifying the major ecosystem processes that regulate recruitment strength of key groundfish species (arrowtooth flounder, Pacific cod, Pacific ocean perch, sablefish, and walleye pollock) in the GOA. The focus is on a functional group of five predatory fish species that are commercially important and account for most of the predatory fish biomass in the GOA. Taken together they encompass a range of life history strategies and geographic distributions that provide contrast to explore regional ecosystem processes. Read full UTL funded project

The remaining three components are being competed separately and integrated in a post-proposal selection process to ensure achievement of a fully vertical trophic understanding. For full details, see the GOA IERP Implementation Plan and the Request for Proposals (RFP amended July 21, 2009).

• Forage Base: To focus on forage base and resources which influence the productivity of the top level predator(s) chosen. The type, quality and quantity of food, and its timing and location, are critical to understanding higher trophic level responses. 
  
  
• Lower Trophic Level and Physical Oceanography: To focus on biological and physical oceanographic parameters on which this portion of the ecosystem is based. This includes euphausiids, fish eggs, and larval fishes.
  
  
• Ecosystem Modeling: To describe and predict the responses (and variability therein) of this portion of the GOA ecosystem to environmental and anthropogenic processes, including climate change.

The GOA IERP will include one planning year (FY2010), three field years (FY 2011, 2012 and 2013), followed by one synthesis year (2014).