FISHFATE: Population Dynamics Models to Assess Risks of Hydraulic Entrainment by Dredges

摘要

The interagency coordination process through which environmental windows are determined for individual dredging projects is frequently handicapped by a paucity of technical knowledge pertaining to important attributes of the fishery resource(s) of concern and potential conflicts resulting from the dredging event. The subject of this Technical Note is the conceptual development of an integrated computer simulation package, called FISHFATE, that provides a capability to assess alternative environmental windows that arise from issues related to hydraulic entrainment of aquatic organisms. To be an effective tool in facilitating dredging project coordination, modeling applications must: (a) make optimal use of existing data resources (i.e., not require expensive, time-consuming collection of extensive field data sets), (b) be capable of making conservative estimates of parameters where quantitative data are lacking, and (c) be adaptable to a wide range of dredging project scenarios. FISHFATE is intended to express population risks due to entrainment in probabilistic terms.