Bahamas Biocomplexity Project

Fiorenza Micheli and Carrie Kappel are involved in new a collaborative project led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York. The project, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), focuses on the Bahamas, an archipelagic nation of hundreds of islands. The Bahamian government currently is in the process of expanding its set of marine protected areas (MPAs) into an extensive reserve network. Synthesizing theories, methods, and data from oceanography, biology, and the social sciences, the researchers will address questions about the design of marine reserve networks. The research team will focus particularly on understanding, through direct observation and simulation modeling, the complex feedbacks between coastal peoples and their marine environment, and the ripples and cascades of these human-ecosystem interactions throughout an archipelago. Data analysis will involve integrating quantitative and qualitative data collected from multiple sources, including satellite imagery of marine habitats, underwater surveys of marine species, population genetic analysis of key indicator species, ethnographies of stakeholders, such as fishers, residents, tourists, decision makers, landowners and business operators, and economic analyses.