Current grad student Grant Adams, along with collaborators from the Ohio State University, David Dippold and Stuart Ludsin, released a new paper in Fisheries Research. They explored the existence of non-additive, spatially-dependent effects of adult population size and thermal conditions on recreational harvest patterns of Lake Erie walleye. Their work identified nonlinear, additive, and generally positive effects of thermal conditions and adult population size on harvest rates. However, they found that relationships were spatially-dependent and that accounting for spatially-dependent relationships helped explain inter-annual and intra-annual variation in lake-wide harvest rates. As in marine ecosystems, their findings demonstrate the benefit of using modeling approaches that consider the spatial dependency of harvest rate on demographic and environmental factors to understanding broader harvest dynamics in large lakes.

Citation:

Dippold, D., G. D. Adams, & S. Ludsin. 2020. Spatial patterning of walleye recreational harvest in Lake Erie: role of density-dependent and –independent factors. Fisheries Research. 105676. DOI: 10.1016/j.fishres.2020.105676.

Article can be accessed here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165783620301934?via%3Dihub