The Value of Integrating Social and Ecological Science into Regional Vulnerability Assessments to Ocean Acidification: a case study from the Olympic Coast
This place-based collaborative effort to understand, anticipate, and prepare for ocean changes affecting natural and human systems owes its success to how oceanographic, ecological, and social scientists and tribal community partners co-designed and co-produced the project. Our goal was to provide an assessment of coupled social-ecological vulnerability to effects from ocean acidification based on new social science and a synthesis of existing data and model projections relevant to the Olympic Coast, its biological resources, and its inhabitants. We outlined eight objectives to guide our project, developing areas of strong integration, including drawing from Indigenous knowledge to inform social science understanding, and drawing on these two systems of knowledge for guiding selection of species of focus for biological risk assessment, with feedback to community preparation and adaptation actions. I will focus on ecological elements of the risk assessment but stress its utility in the context of the social science.

About the Speaker

Dr. Jan Newton is a Senior Principal Oceanographer with the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington and Affiliate Professor with the UW School of Oceanography. She is a biological oceanographer with a focus on coastal dynamics. She works to build ocean observing systems and assure connections to society, with expertise in linking observations and needs across scales from local to regional to global for optimized science and in doing so, engaging with partners for effective outputs. She is the Executive Director of NANOOS, the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, part of U.S. IOOS, a co-director of the Washington Ocean Acidification Center, and a co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network, GOA-ON. She is a co-lead for the Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability, OARS, programme endorsed by the United Nations as part of the UN Ocean Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
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