Daily to Decadal Ecological Forecasting along North American Coastlines Workshop
Background
Coastal areas share unique intersections of large-scale climate variability and local hydrology, wetland, benthic and pelagic ecosystems, and anthropogenic pressures. Forecasting of harmful environmental conditions for planning, adaptation, and mitigation purposes is both complex and urgently needed. Recent syntheses have highlighted sources of predictability for ecological forecasting at seasonal to interannual timescales relevant to specific applications (e.g., fisheries), but they have also revealed challenges such as a disconnect between open ocean and coastal and estuarine forecasting communities as well as the significant challenge of data availability.
Goals and Outcomes
This workshop aims at bringing together climate scientists, biogeochemists, and global and regional modelers to:
- Examine the connections between large-scale physical and biogeochemical processes and coastal processes, and identify sources of predictability at daily to decadal timescales that are specific to regions along US coastlines.
- Assess the suitability and needs for observations that characterize key physical and biogeochemical ecosystem drivers, their interactions across scales, and their vulnerability to climate change and in different coastal regions.
- Assess the major gaps in both understanding and modeling/observing capabilities that limit our ability to produce ecological forecasts at the scales needed for management along US coastlines, and identify potential avenues for accelerating progress.
This workshop will allow us to characterize the sources of predictability and observational needs unique to each region, while identifying methodological approaches and data requirements that are common among different regions. Expected deliverables include a workshop report submitted to BAMS or EOS and a white paper that highlights key data limitations and outlines possible avenues to overcome this problem.
Given the inherent interdisciplinary nature of ecological forecasting, this workshop is a joint effort between US CLIVAR and the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) programs.
Target Participants
Attendance is open to all with an aim to capture a diverse group across:
- Climate scientists, biogeochemists, and global and regional modelers
- Expertise in observations, process understanding, modeling and prediction, and data science
- Career stage, with early career researchers strongly encouraged to participate
- Measures of diversity in life experiences and perspectives
- Place-based focus (e.g., Gulf of Mexico, US East Coast, Arctic)
Workshop Format
The workshop will include plenary sessions with invited talks, a poster session, and breakout sessions. While the meeting format will evolve, one goal of the workshop is to allow for a diverse array of opportunities for individuals to participate, whether orally to the whole group or smaller breakout groups or through written venues such as Slack channels.
The scientific organizing committee is aiming to host the workshop in a hybrid format at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), pending WHOI approval.
Pre-Workshop Activities
Leading up to the workshop, the Scientific Organizing Committee will put together a blog to collect contributions by prospective participants on their specific research activities, results, and challenges. In addition, webinars were organized over the past year on relevant topics.
These activities will initiate interactions among participants and contribute to the definition of the major challenges.
Scientific Organizing Committee
Antonietta Capotondi, University of Colorado/NOAA PSL (co-chair)
Victoria Coles, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (co-chair)
Sophie Clayton, Old Dominion University
Marjorie Friedrichs, Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Michelle Gierach, California Institute of Technology/NASA JPL
Art Miller, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Charles Stock, NOAA GFDL
Program Organizing Committee
Heather Benway, OCB
Cyndie Graddy, US CLIVAR
Mai Maheigan, OCB
Mike Patterson, US CLIVAR
Mary Zawoysky, OCB
Jennie Zhu, US CLIVAR
Workshop Sponsors
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values of the OCB and US CLIVAR Programs. These values will be reflected through the planning and execution of the workshop.
