Climate change impacts on primary production and economically important fish stocks in the Black Sea

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, İktisat Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2013

Öğrenci: SELİN KÜÇÜKAVŞAR

Eş Danışman: HAKAN ERCAN, AYŞEN YILMAZ

Özet:

Coastal urbanization, heavy nutrient/pollutant loads due to intense anthropogenic activities and unsustainable fisheries have been threatening life-support system of marine environment and getting more drastic with the climatic variations and its impacts. Changes in sea surface temperatures and related dynamical processes have been threatening bottom-up / top-down control of marine food webs via variations in primary production and changes in biogeographic and temporal responses of thermophilic species. All these perturbations, habitat and biodiversity losses consequently affect marine food resources and its economy, coastal life-support systems for human society. Proposed thesis aims to determine relationship between climate change and primary production and to understand how economically important fish stocks have been influenced by the variations in primary production in the Black Sea for the last 45 years. Time series data available through in situ measurements of lower trophic level ecosystem parameters (METU-Institute of Marine Sciences) was evaluated, whereas the data on meteorological parameters and biodiversity change/fish stocks was collected from Turkish State Meteorological Service and Turkish Statistical Institute respectively for the same period. Another important deliverable of the thesis will be the proposal of how to strengthen sustainable management strategies, economy and policy tools for Turkish fishery sector under these determined relationships.