Climate science strategy of the US National Marine Fisheries Service

Bridging From Monitoring to Solutions-Based Thinking: Lessons From CalCOFI for Understanding and Adapting to Marine Climate Change Impacts

“…Some of the key challenges involve: properly reproducing biogeochemical dynamics, which are essential for projecting changes in nutrients, oxygen, and pH; improving model resolution, which is important for resolving processes such as upwelling at smaller spatial scales; and accurately reproducing coastal dynamics, which are key for nearshore species such as Dungeness Crab (Metacarcinus magister) and California Spiny Lobster (Panulirus interruptus) (Holt et al, 2009(Holt et al, , 2014Stock et al, 2011). For managing some living marine resources, climate projections on the 3-10 years time scale are the most useful, however, these timescales are not well represented within global climate and ocean models (Busch et al, 2016).…”

“…Improving the paths by which monitoring data are used by management bodies will improve the ability for managers to make decisions that are more responsive to climate change. Answering how climate-related effects can be incorporated into adaptive marine resource management processes is a key question for NMFS (Busch et al, 2016), and the PFMC is currently considering this as part of its Climate and Fishing Communities Initiative.…”

“…NOAA Fisheries has developed a Climate Science Strategy (CSS) for including climate-related information in managing fisheries and protected species, which includes conducting climate vulnerability analyses, establishing ecosystem indicators, and developing capacity for conducting management strategy evaluations (MSEs) of climate-related impacts on management targets, priorities, and goals (Busch et al, 2016). MSEs are a modeling tool which allow scientists and managers to compare the performance of different management strategies in meeting specific management objectives (i.e., fishery resource status) (Punt et al, 2016) and can be used to manage climate change risks (Plaganyi et al, 2013).…”

Fisheries and Climate Change: Legal and Management Implications

“…1) Determine appropriate, informed reference points; 2) Identify robust strategies for managing LMRs under changing climate conditions; 3) Design decision processes that are robust to climate-change scenarios; 4) Predict future states of ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities; 5) Determine the mechanisms of climate change-related effects on ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities; 6) Track trends in ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities and provide early warning of change; and 7) Build and maintain the science infrastructure required to fulfill NOAA Fisheries mandates under changing climate conditions. In the short-term, the agency will implement the strategy by conducting climate vulnerability analyses in each region for all living marine resources, establishing and strengthening ecosystem indicators and status reports in all regions, and developing capacity to conduct management strategy evaluations of climate-related impacts on management targets, priorities, and goals (Busch et al 2016).…”

Fisheries Volume 44 Number 6 June 2019

“…1) Determine appropriate, informed reference points; 2) Identify robust strategies for managing LMRs under changing climate conditions; 3) Design decision processes that are robust to climate-change scenarios; 4) Predict future states of ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities; 5) Determine the mechanisms of climate change-related effects on ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities; 6) Track trends in ecosystems, LMRs, and LMR-dependent human communities and provide early warning of change; and 7) Build and maintain the science infrastructure required to fulfi ll NOAA Fisheries mandates under changing climate conditions. In the short-term, the agency will implement the strategy by conducting climate vulnerability analyses in each region for all living marine resources, establishing and strengthening ecosystem indicators and status reports in all regions, and developing capacity to conduct management strategy evaluations of climate-related impacts on management targets, priorities, and goals (Busch et al 2016 ).…”