EYSEC: Ecosystem Dynamics and Sustainable Utilization of Marine Living Resources in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea

EYSEC: Ecosystem Dynamics and Sustainable Utilization
of Marine Living Resources in the East China Sea and Yellow
Sea

This programme is part of CHINA-GLOBEC. The aims of
EYSEC are to:

1) identify key processes of ecosystem dynamics and
improve predictive and modelling capabilities in the East
China and Yellow Seas.

2) provide scientific underpinning for the sustainable
utilization of the ecosystem and a rational managment
system for fisheries and other marine life.

The scientific objectives of the programme are to
determine:

1) the impacts of key physical processes on biological
production

2) cycling and regeneration mechanisms of biogenic
elements.

3) basic production processes and the role of
zooplankton in the ecosystem

4) food web tropho-dynamics and shifts in dominant
species.

The project looks at the contribution of stratification,
frontogenesis, upwelling and bottom boundary interaction to
trophodynamics. The key issues explored are energy flow and
conversion of key resource species, dynamics of key
zooplankton populations, cycling and regeneration of
biogenic elements, ecological effect of key physical
processes, pelagic and benthic coupling, microbial loops
contribution to the main food web, key
physico-chemico-biologic proceses in high production areas,
exchanges contributing to the dominant species shift and
population dynamics.

The project started in October 1999 and is funded until
September 2004. It is funded by the Ministry of Science
and Technology, P.R. China.