Interim Report of the Working Group on Integrative Physical-Biological and Ecosystem Modelling (WGIPEM)

The Working Group on Integrative Physical-Biological and Ecosystem Modelling (WGIPEM) met in Brest, France, on 6–8 June 2016. Plenary discussions focused on new achievements in the fields of ecosystem modelling, analyses of lower trophic levels, habitat connectivity, end-to-end modelling, and how to include human and animal behaviour in models. Furthermore, new as well as completed projects and meetings dealing with the ToRs of the group were presented, the involvement of the group in upcoming meetings was addressed and the cooperation with other ICES working groups (mainly WGIAB, WGBIOP, and WGIMM) was discussed. How to link and couple models, how to define scenarios for future projections and how to implement those as well as identifying emerging modelling science fields were part of the plenary discussions. Three breakout groups were formed: the first one focusing on comparing how perturbations in mortality terms will influence the spatial and temporal dynamic of trophic cascades as represented in lower trophic level models of different complexity. This approach will help identify how different model parame-terizations, trophic structures (e.g. the links between the ecosystem components) and local specifics will influence zooplankton and phytoplankton components; a second group identified methods and possibilities to perform sensitivity analysis and param-eter testing for complex ecosystem models. End-to-end and other complex models are often criticized for lacking confidence estimates in their predictions, the hyper-sensitivity to certain assumptions or their hyper-stability due to over-parameterization. The aim of the subgroup was to identify ways on how to tackle and enumerate these feature and problems to allow end-users to customize and chose the set of models and outputs that best suits their approaches and set of questions; the third subgroup dealt with physiological based models of foraging and growth and how to most appropriately include thermal limits such as by including aerobic scope as depicted in the Oxygen and Capacity Limited Thermal Tolerance (OCLTT) para-digm.