Over the
past decade, a growing network of chronologies has been developed
from annual growth-increment widths in fish and bivalves in the North
Pacific. These chronologies have been integrated across species, marine
regions, and other biological time-series to develop indicators and identify
climate drivers of productivity and functioning at the ecosystem level.
For the upcoming workshop, representatives of major
fisheries laboratories will assemble to learn basic fundamentals chronology-development techniques
and, most importantly, identify the most promising species and collections that
would be suitable for such an approach in the North Atlantic, North Sea,
Baltic, and Mediterranean regions.
Specific
objectives of the workshop include:
- Teaching participants on the fundamentals of chronology development from a tree-ring (dendrochronology) perspective. Topics to be covered include visual crossdating, increment measurement, and statistical approaches to chronology development
- Discussing the
assumptions and limitations of chronology development as well as the
characteristics of species and collections for which these approaches would be
ideally suited
- Identifying species and collections that are most promising for chronology development based on participants’ expertise on otolith interpretation and institutional collections
- Considering other physical and biological time series (indices of fish somatic growth or size, recruitment histories, lower-trophic productivity) that could be integrated with fish or bivalve chronologies
- Identifying
the most promising research questions that may be addressed using these
techniques in the North Atlantic, North Sea, Baltic Sea, and Mediterranean
- Initiating, based on workshop outcomes, an
international cooperative project on chronology development to commence at a later date
- Proposing a
future hands-on, training workshop for those interested in learning the
details of chronology-development techniques
