Working Toward Solutions: Sea Level Rise and Coastal Communities

Submitted by sworden on Tue, 2012-10-09 13:12
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October 2012: Working Toward Solutions: Sea Level Rise and Coastal Communities

The impacts of sea level rise are being felt in varying degrees of severity across the Pacific. On Pacific islands, increased and prolonged inundation is forcing governments to relocate some citizens while on the west coast of the United States, governments are considering how to protect airports, sewage treatment plants and other critical infrastructure. It is crucial to understand how climate change will impact the coast and what can be done to mitigate damage.  Read more...

California Ocean and Coastal Ecological Principles Guide

Submitted by sworden on Fri, 2012-08-31 10:36
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September 2012: California Ocean and Coastal Ecological Principles Guide

Government staff must weigh myriad, sometimes conflicting, considerations before making management decisions that impact California’s iconic coast and ocean. A holistic, ecosystem-based approach to management that uses the best available scientific information can ensure that ocean and coastal management decisions account for the maintenance and restoration of ecosystem health. This month, the Center for Ocean Solutions released a guide, Incorporating Ecological Principles into California Ocean and Coastal Management: Examples from Practice (Guide), which describes how important ecological principles and ecosystem vulnerability characteristics, such as cumulative impacts and climate change, can be applied to existing California management practices.  Read more...

Natural Disaster Preparedness in the Pacific

Submitted by sworden on Mon, 2012-08-06 15:14
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August 2012: Natural Disaster Preparedness in the Pacific

This month, the Pacific Ocean Library blog focuses on natural disaster preparedness in the Pacific. Historically the site of much volcanic activity, the Pacific region is now also experiencing climate change.  Our blog looks into what this means for coastal communities and what strategies can be used to better prepare for natural disasters and hazards.  Read more...

Support the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs

Submitted by sworden on Mon, 2012-07-02 14:45
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July 2012: Support the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs

This month, the Pacific Ocean Library blog focuses on climate change and coral reefs. How is changing climate affecting corals and coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific? What solutions are being used to restore degraded coral reefs? Read more...

Managing and Mitigating Ocean Acidification in California and the Pacific

Submitted by bhooton on Tue, 2012-04-17 13:41
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Welcome to our blog! Here you can explore hot ocean topics and find postings that highlight a few of the most interesting new articles added in the Center for Ocean Solution’s Pacific Ocean Library. We hope to inspire you to participate in the ongoing conversation and encourage you to explore the resources of the Pacific Ocean Library.

April 2012: Managing and Mitigating Ocean Acidification in California and the Pacific

In April, we focus on ocean acidification. How is carbon dioxide (CO2) affecting our oceans, what are the consequences of increased levels for marine ecosystems, and what can we do to manage and mitigate rising CO2 in our oceans? As California takes steps to better understand the impacts of ocean acidification and how to develop a response, state leaders recently asked the Center for Ocean Solutions to analyze the issue.  Read more...

Today's Unprecedented Ocean Acidification

Submitted by bhooton on Tue, 2012-03-13 09:14
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by Ryan Kelly   and Meg Caldwell Meg Caldwell thumbnail

When an environmental issue merits a full-scale editorial in The New York Times, it’s a sign that the issue has broken out of the scientific literature and into the popular consciousness. Last Friday, 10 March 2012, The Times ran an editorial highlighting the human-caused change in the world’s ocean chemistry. One consequence of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an ocean significantly more acidic than it was just a few generations ago, and this change is accelerating in tandem with our carbon dioxide emissions.

An "acid ocean SOS." (photo: Lou Dematteis/Spectral Q/Handout)

Not Your Parents' Water Pollution: Clean Water Act Failures in a New Climate

Submitted by bhooton on Tue, 2011-10-18 12:53
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Photo: MSVG, Flickr Creative Commons

by Ryan P. Kelly and Margaret R. Caldwell

This week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave California some tough love in the form of a ghastly report card on water quality along our coasts and in our rivers and streams: the state’s water pollution seems to have gotten much worse, with the number of polluted water bodies skyrocketing between 2006 and 2010.  Some of this change is due to more aggressive testing; the blame for the rest is solely our own.  And while this news is bad enough on its own, what’s often not discussed is that all of that polluted water ends up downstream in the coastal ocean, already hard hit by decades of abuse.

An Academic and Municipal Partnership Tackles Local Land-Sea Policy

Submitted by eloury on Tue, 2011-01-18 17:25
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Workshop participant Helen OBrien from UC Santa Cruz works between sessions (photo: A. Abeles).    by Julie Stewart, MARINE curriculum intern

It’s not every day that the mayor, city planners and press come to Hopkins Marine Station to hear students speak, particularly at 9 AM on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning. But on December 5, Mayor Carmelita Garcia and Councilman Bill Kampe of Pacific Grove, along with local and regional managers and a reporter from the Cedar Street Times, came to hear policy recommendations from local graduate students for a course sponsored by the Center for Ocean Solutions.

Graduate students from six local campuses (UCSC, Moss Landing Marine Labs, CSUMB, MIIS, Stanford and Hopkins Marine Station) were involved in this MARINE (Monterey Area Research Institutions’ Network for Education), course, which is part of COS’ education initiative. Stanford University Professor Nicole Ardoin was the faculty lead for the course and MARINE Program Manager Margaret Krebs was the course coordinator. I was also involved in this project, and although I was initially signed on to develop the course’s content, my role evolved and I also became a liaison, organizer, and facilitator.  Read more...

Status Update for California's Wetlands: Some Loss, Some Gain

Submitted by eloury on Fri, 2010-10-22 13:55
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Researchers in the mudflats of the Morro Bay Estuary. (photo: Mike Baird)

by Erin Loury, Science Communication Intern

Buffer in a storm, migratory rest stop, water filter, crucial habitat and protected nursery ground – California’s wetlands perform many roles at that special zone where land and water meet.  Neither fully terrestrial nor completely aquatic, these unique habitats grace every California landscape, from desert playas to mountain meadows.  Now the California Natural Resources Agency has released the second State of the State’s Wetlands report (pdf), which summarizes efforts to protect, monitor, and restore our wetlands between 1999 and 2009.  

This current chapter in the wetlands story unfolds against a historical backdrop of great destruction: between 1780’s and 1980’s, California lost over 90% of its wetland area. The 2.9 million acres that remain encompass mostly freshwater sources, such as lakes, vernal pools, marshes and springs.  Recognizing the many valuable services that wetlands provide, California voters have approved at least five bond measures, and invested billions of dollars over the past ten years to protect and restore wetlands.  The report notes substantial wetland increases in San Francisco Bay, along California’s south coast, in the Central Valley and in the Sierras. Read more... 

Fiji’s Call to Arms for the Pacific

Submitted by ahemphill on Thu, 2010-07-01 16:13
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Fiji's Pacific Coast (photo: Arlo Hemphill, Center for Ocean Solutions)

Arlo Hemphill by Arlo Hemphill, Communications Specialist 

Suva, Fiji.  Thunderous clapping from the seated meke dancers, a solo chant and then silence as a lone dancer, dressed in the grass skirt-like liku vau, delivers a bowl of kava to Meg Caldwell, Center for Ocean Solutions' Executive Director and one of a dozen special guests of honor at this traditional Fijian ceremony.  Ms. Caldwell is seated next to Joketani Cokanasiga, Fiji’s Minister of Fisheries, Forests and Agriculture, who greets the guests assembled from across the Pacific basin with a call to arms, a challenge for all the Pacific - nations and citizens alike - to work in unison in response to the major threats on the largest of our planet’s oceans.  The call now made, the bowls of kava are downed, and the dancers retake center stage, leading the group into a night of revelry and celebration of our shared future.  Read more...

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