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...

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)

Pacific Ocean Library Featured in New Blog

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2011-11-17 12:01
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The Pacific Ocean Library blog will spotlight new additions to the library’s collection of news articles, academic papers, and other materials useful to both researchers and general readers with an interest in Pacific Ocean issues. This debut post features a paper covering a key concern for marine conservation planning.

COS Influences Final Report to Obama on BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Submitted by cosedit on Fri, 2011-02-25 17:15
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Assessing the Final Report of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling

Kimi Narita  By Kimi Narita, Center for Ocean Solutions Legal Intern

Back in early August 2010 Meg Caldwell, Executive Director of the Center for Ocean Solutions (COS), was asked to testify before the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (Commission).  Her testimony would address the statutory and regulatory framework for outer continental shelf (OCS) leasing and would identify potential changes to both minimize the likelihood of another catastrophic oil spill occurring and prepare the nation should another disaster occur.  August was a busy month for the COS staff, particularly myself and Meg Caldwell, as we conducted research, corresponded with other ocean experts, and drafted her testimony.  Caldwell flew to Washington D.C. and presented her testimony to a very appreciative Commission on August 25, 2010, and we assembled her written testimony the following week.  Caldwell’s testimony stressed that the current laws and regulations are written and administered in a way that leads to poor environmental review and minimal inter-agency consultation.  Read more...

Carbon dioxide is polluting the ocean: tackling ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act

Submitted by eloury on Wed, 2010-12-01 15:58
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Animals like corals that depend on calcium carbonate to construct their skeletons are on the frontlines of the ocean's rising acidity. (photo: M. Fox)

by Melissa Foley, Science Early Career Fellow and Erin Loury, Science Communication Intern.

Ocean acidification, or the increase of low-pH, corrosive ocean waters, certainly qualifies as a process that impairs water quality.   Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created guidance to address ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. 

On November 15th, the EPA released a Memorandum to guide regions and states in reporting the impacts of ocean acidification under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, which requires states to submit a list of impaired water bodies that do not meet water quality standards, and develop total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for these waters.  A TMDL is a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive and still safely meet water quality standards.  In the case of ocean acidification, the main pollutant in question is carbon dioxide (CO2).  Read more...

Obama announces a National Ocean Policy to guide our management of the ocean

Submitted by eloury on Tue, 2010-07-20 12:59
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Obama's new National Ocean Policy charts a sustainable course of ocean conservation and management for future generations (photo:Steve Lonhart, SIMoN NOAA)  

by Erin Loury, Science Communication Intern

Some good news for the oceans! On July 19th, President Obama signed an Executive Order that establishes a National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Coasts, and Great Lakes. The Executive Order adopts the Final Recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force (pdf), also released on July 19th after a year of research and deliberation. The Order and Recommendations highlight the importance of ecosystem health and biological diversity to human well-being, acknowledge the threats of climate change and ocean acidification, and call for the implementation of comprehensive coastal and marine spatial planning.

Both the Order and the Final Recommendations invoke the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico as “a stark reminder of how vulnerable our marine environments are, and how much communities and the Nation rely on healthy and resilient ocean and coastal ecosystems.”

“Until now, there has been no cohesive, strategic vision for where the country is going with respect to ocean health and ocean resource management,” said Matthew Armsby of the Center for Ocean Solution’s (COS) marine spatial planning team on the significance of this Order.  “We’ve had many different laws and policies, but the nation’s resource managers lacked a meaningful prioritization of ecosystem health and sustainability.  Read more...

The Ocean's Stars Call for Action at the National Marine Sanctuary Leadership Award Dinner

Submitted by eloury on Wed, 2010-06-16 22:21
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Meeting some ocean stars at Capitol Hill Ocean Week: Sylvia Earle (in blue) and Julie Packard pose with COS scholarship recipients Erin Loury and Malin Pinsky at the National Marine Sanctuary Awards Dinner

by Erin Loury

Science Communication Intern/M.S. Candidate at Moss Landing Marine Labs

 

 

The National Marine Sanctuary Awards Dinner has all the glitter and star wattage of an ocean-themed Academy Awards.  Malin and I were fortunate enough to attend along with the rest of the Center for Ocean Solutions team as part of Capitol Hill Ocean Week.

Also in attendance were such ocean luminaries as Jane Lubchenco (head of NOAA), Julie Packard (Executive Director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium), Lt. Don Walsh (one of two explorers to reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench),  Robert Ballard (discoverer of the Titanic), Sylvia Earle (ocean explorer and TED prize winner), and the family of Jacques Cousteau.  Read more...

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