CLIMFISH - Climate change impact on the sustainable use of Lake Tanganyika fisheries

Context and objectives

This project is the continuation of a former project, CLIMLAKE started in 2001, extending until the beginning of 2005 and also financed by the SPO (EV/13/02). This project addressed the recent concerns about climate variability (ENSO) and its effect on ecological processes in Lake Tanganyika. The main components of the project were environmental monitoring, study of present plankton, geochemical studies, diatoms analysis in sediment cores and development of an eco-hydrodynamic model. In this project, the potential contribution of Remote Sensing (RS) data was underestimated. This is why the CLIMFISH project was launched. The general objectives of CLIMFISH are (1) to investigate the impact of recent environmental changes on the fisheries of Lake Tanganyika using weather and limnological monitoring, fisheries statistics, remote sensing and eco-hydrodynamics modelling; (2) to use those results and the ECO-SLIM model, developed in the former research program, under expected climate change most likely scenarios to evaluate the future of the fisheries at Lake Tanganyika; (3) to evaluate the feasibility of developing an ECO-FISH model as a forecasting tool for the managers of Lake Tanganyika fisheries.