MENU II: Comparison of Marine Ecosystems of Norway and the US.

Marine ecosyslems the world over are experiencing increasing natural and anthropogenic forcing that may causesubstantil change to the structure and function of these ecosystems. Society has recognized that living marineresources require management in a broader ecosystem context.This proposal follows on from the successfulcompletion of the first MENU project, a joint undertaking between Norway and US financed by the RCN. It conducted marine ecosystems comparisons based primarily on observational data for the eastern Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and the Norwegian and Barents seas. In MENU II. we plan to extend these comparative studies by using several diferent ecosystem models and expand the geographic coverage to include Nothern California Current, Southern Nwe England, and the Middle Atlantic Bight in the US and the North Sea off Norway. We will apply four different modeling apporaches and compare the structure and functioning of the ecosystems in this manner. These approaches iclude ECOPATH, Multispecies production models, biophysical models and the ATLANTIS end-to-end system model. For the two former models there will be very little developments neede, but the ATLANTIS model has not been set up fo Norwegian waters, and develtoping an ATLANTIS model for the Barents Sea will be a major part of the project. Ecosystems indicators are measures metrics that provide information on trends in important characteristics of the system. We will use indicators 1) for comparing models and ecosystems, 2) in assessment of ecosystems status, and 3) as a means to monitor model performance against oberservation. Indicators will therefore be the key metric for comparison between ecosystems as well as a link between the models and ecosystem management, and thus a core element of the proposal.