The Southern Ocean is vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and increasing human activity. The combination of these drivers of change has given rise to a suite of potential scenarios for the future of Antarctic ecosystems; the complexity of interactions between system components and data limitations for Southern Ocean systems, however, hinder our forecasting abilities.
Here we introduce the parametrisation and calibration process of an East Antarctic implementation of the Atlantis end-to-end ecosystem model, an end-to-end modelling framework for forecasting long-term trends of ecosystem components under a variety of environmental change and management scenarios. The East Antarctic Atlantis Model (EAAM) is centred around Prydz Bay, an important breeding and feeding ground for several species acting as linkages from primary producers to secondary consumers. The model is forced with physical output from the ACCESS-OM2 ocean-sea ice model; it focuses on representing the dynamics of energetic pathways, and is also the first Atlantis implementation to include explicit sea ice habitat and Antarctic krill, a species with a complex life history. The calibrated model will simulate most likely scenarios of changing environmental conditions and human exploitation of Southern Ocean resources, such as krill and toothfish fisheries, and their combined effects on the ecosystem.