Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Some of the greatest impacts from climate change are expected in the world’s coastal zones, home to roughly half the world’s population and some of the most productive, yet threatened, ecosystems on earth. Threats include sea level rise, increasing frequency and intensity of severe storms, coastal habitat deterioration, and displacement of human populations. Responding adaptively to these challenges requires both detailed knowledge of how climate forcing affects coastal environments and societies, and effective governance structures for incorporating state-of-the-art scientific information into responsive management.

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) is the largest institution in the USA focusing on research, education, and advisory service related to the coastal ocean. Research at VIMS extends from watersheds to the open ocean, and spans the globe from the poles to the tropics, with a primary emphasis on coastal and estuarine environments. A diverse portfolio of VIMS research is helping to improve our understanding of the complex relationships between climate forcing and various coastal processes, and their impacts on living resources and the human communities that they support. VIMS also provides unbiased scientific information and graduate training that helps policymakers, industry, and citizens effectively manage and conserve coastal and estuarine resources for present and future generations.

Fig 1. Monthly mean sea-level measurements (blue dots and lines) and average longterm trend of sea level rise (red line) for 1930-2003 for the Hampton Roads regions of south-eastern Virginia, USA

Impact of rising sea level

The low-elevation Mid-Atlantic coastal plain is an important case study region for predicting the environmental and societal disruptions expected from climate change. As part of the Chesapeake Regional Consortium (CRC),VIMS is among the global leaders in refining these observational databases and predictive models. In conjunction with governments, industry, and research institutions under the auspices of CBOS – Chesapeake Bay Observing System, www.cbos.org – VIMS helped develop the prototype Chesapeake Inundation Prediction System (CIPS) as a potential forecasting tool for NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), in partnership with local and regional emergency managers. CIPS improvements to flooding forecasts using modern visualisation tools are expected to improve their accuracy and reliability and generate tangible benefits by reducing deaths, injuries, human hardship, and property damage.

Coastal storm hazards and coastal protection

Hurricanes and tropical storms cause an average of 20,000 deaths annually and over US$6 billion dollars in damage worldwide. Combined with rising sea levels, increasing intensity of such storms will have devastating consequences for property, human health, regional economies and societies unless robust planning and mitigation efforts are implemented in a systematic fashion. Ongoing efforts by VIMS scientists to establish better historic baseline data on tropical storms and hurricanes include research on Caribbean islands where geological analyses of coastal sediments are extending the record of hurricane occurrence to nearly 1,000 years before present. These records can be directly correlated with hurricane frequency and intensity to calibrate or verify long-term climate models that predict warming-induced changes in hurricane frequency and intensity.

Climate impacts on coastal communities and economies are aggravated by the continuing loss of coastal wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs. VIMS maintains the world’s longest-running research and monitoring program on submerged aquatic vegetation, documenting previously unrecognised worldwide loss of this important coastal buffer and seafood nursery habitat. VIMS’ Center for Coastal Resources Management (http://ccrm.vims.edu) provides effective wetlands research and management for developing computer models and GIS tools that allow resource managers and stakeholders to assess wetland conditions, and ecological and economic value. Such assessments will become increasingly critical to managing the consequences of rising sea levels as wetlands respond dynamically to climate forcing.

Living resources are embedded in complex food webs subject to a changing environment and multiple human pressures. Effectively managing these resources requires detailed understanding of both species interactions and climate forcing, and sophisticated multispecies fisheries models that integrate these elements. Analysis by VIMS scientists of environmental data from 1960 to 2000 have documented relationships between dominant decadal climate regimes and recruitment of commercially important oysters, juvenile finfish, and blue crabs. Knowledge of prevailing background climatic regimes and their variability can help managers evaluate the probability for success of resource management plans using both single and new multi-species models under different climate change scenarios.

Dramatically shifting inputs of water and materials from land, via rivers and estuaries, to the coastal ocean, are impacting water budgets, sediment supplies and ecosystem function. Historic sediment records of organic materials deposited in coastal systems such as Chesapeake Bay demonstrate how human settlement has impacted hydrology through damming and water management, as well as nutrient and carbon inputs from agriculture, pollution, and changing land use. VIMS scientists currently conduct research related to the Earth’s water and carbon cycles around the world ranging from the open Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and Southern Oceans, to coastal North America, Asia, Europe and Antarctica in an effort to anticipate how future climate change will further influence these cycles and their effects on the marine environment.

W: www.vims.edu