Recent publications of the Chesapeake 2000 agreement (C2K) and the Fisheries Ecosystem Plan reflect the growing interest in integrated management of water quality and fisheries. Together, these two directives call for a combination of: (1) ecosystem-based fisheries management, (2) water quality improvements to restore key fish habitats, and (3) management of populations at lower trophic levels for water quality benefits. The US EPA Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) has invested in a variety of numerical modeling approaches to address issues related to management of the estuary. The Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Model (CBWQM) has been a primary tool used to simulate estuarine ecosystem responses to alternative nutrient and sediment watershed management policies. Although this model includes variables related to food supply at lower trophic levels (phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic macrofauna) and related to benthic habitat conditions (dissolved oxygen, water clarity, seagrass), it does not simulate fish populations. The NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office (NCBO) has sponsored development of a fisheries-oriented trophic network model for the Bay using a widely applied software package (Ecopath with Ecosim, or EwE).
Members of the CBP Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC), working with the CBP Modeling Subcommittee and NCBO, organized a meeting in Annapolis, MD on January 8-9, 2004 to examine the potential for coupling these two modeling approaches (CBWQM and EwE) to address questions pertaining to integrated management of water quality and fisheries. The workshop was structured around a series of presentations that described existing models and previous efforts to couple similar models of ecosystems, water quality, food webs and fisheries.
