Action science in practice: Co-production of a decision support tool visualizing effects of nutrient and hypoxia reduction goals on fisheries species

Abstract

The Gulf of Mexico hosts some of the most productive fisheries in the United States, whereas the same region is known to experience environmental stressors, such as summer hypoxia. Ecosystem models have been developed for the Gulf of Mexico to determine how hypoxia affects living marine resources, but these models and their output are not always easy to access or interpret by managers, thereby decreasing their implementation in a management setting. To help alleviate the gap between ecosystem model development and management utility, the current study focuses on co-produced, user-friendly tools that describe the effects of nutrient and hypoxia reductions on marine living resources.