Gutiérrez Estrada, Juan CarlosSanz Fernández, VíctorPulido Calvo, InmaculadaGil Herrera, Juan2024-01-082024-01-082020-10Gutiérrez-Estrada, J.C., Sanz-Fernández, V., Pulido-Calvo, I., Gil-Herrera, J. 2020. Improving the interpretability of the effects of environmental factors on abundance of fish stocks. Ecological Indicators 117, 106533. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.1065331470-160Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/10272/22809This study was supported by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment (Fundación Biodiversidad del Ministerio de Agricultura y Pesca, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente) through a research project entitled ‘Herramienta para la gestión pesquera sostenible en distintos escenarios ambientales y climáticos para el área del estrecho de Gibraltar’ (PRCV00424). Support to activities in the field of terrestrial, marine and coastal biodiversity 2016. Spanish data compilation and analysis were carried out within the IEO’s project (FEMP_AND_06) under the framework of the Multi-annual Data Collection Programme of the Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía (Dirección General de Pesca y Acuicultura), cofinanced by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (FEMP). Said Benchoucha and Sana el Arraf from the National Institute of Fisheries Research (INRH) of Tangier (Morocco) provided the Pagellus bogaraveo landing data of the Moroccan fleet in the Strait of Gibraltar. Víctor Sanz-Fernández is financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities with a FPU fellowship (FPU17/04298).Adequately assess the environmental effects on commercially exploited fish stocks is one of the main challenges faced by stock managers in their attempt to achieve ecosystemic management. In this study, we have developed a methodology which allows simulate the evolution of abundance or biomass of a fish population and calculate two indexes (the significant effect of the environmental parameter –EF- and the relative weight index –RW-) that improve the interpretability of the environmental effects on abundance of fish stocks. This methodology, based on the assumption that under the premise of environmental invariability the variation in the abundance of a population is linearly dependent on its abundance in the past, have been integrated into a decision support system namely SFish SubClass 1.1, specifically designed to disaggregate the effects of different environmental factors on a commercially exploited fish population. We have applied our model to the fishery of Pagellus bogaraveo in a complex environmental area (Strait of Gibraltar). The results show that the developed methodology provides plausible simulations. The relative weight index (RW) indicated the time and the significance (EF) of each environmental parameter and showed that the most influential variables were salinity, sea temperature and salinity flux.engAtribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Españahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/Ecosystemic approachComputational simulationTime seriesARIMA modelsOceanic parametersAtmospheric parametersjournal article10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106533open access1209 Estadística2510.01 Oceanografía Biológica2510.07 Oceanografía Física1203.26 Simulación