West Coast stakeholders, including fishers and shellfish farmers reliant on key economically and culturally important species, have already experienced adverse consequences of ocean acidification (OA and other stressors. However, the human dimension of vulnerability and people’s capacity to adapt, particularly in highly resource-dependent economies, remains understudied. In times of changing ocean conditions, high levels of dependence on natural resources expose certain coastal communities to higher risks and vulnerability. Achieving healthy ocean ecosystems and coastal economies in state and federal waters requires cross-disciplinary work to understand what factors (environmental, economic, social, cultural) determine the vulnerability of coastal communities to environmental change, as well as the potential for developing strategies to adapt to these changes. People’s adaptive capacity in the face of environmental disturbance depends on community knowledge, networks, and practices, as well as institutional policies and strategies that support adaptation. This project will assess how 6 coastal communities in Oregon and California are experiencing environmental vulnerability to OA and what they are doing to adapt to OA and associated impacts; as well as evaluate barriers to and key factors for coping in different contexts that can help inform policies to foster and support more resilient communities.The overarching goals of this project are to fill knowledge gaps about the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of coastal communities to OA and other environmental stressors in order to a)support thriving and resilient coastal communities along the U.S. West Coast and b) to support OA policy and decision-making at the state level of governance.

Among the NOAA designated Large Marine Ecosystems, the Gulf
of Mexico (GOM) remains poorly understood in terms of its current OA conditions, despite its
ecological and economic significance. In the northwestern GOM (nwGOM), decadal
acidification has been observed in the shelf-slope region, with metabolic production of CO2
contributing to a larger fraction of CO2 accumulation than uptake of anthropogenic CO2, and the
observed rate of acidification is significantly greater than that in other tropical and subtropical
areas. Unfortunately, whether the observed OA in this region represents a short-term
phenomenon or a long-term trend is unknown.
It is hypothesized that increasing atmospheric CO2, increasing terrestrial nutrient export
due to an enhanced hydrological cycle, and enhanced upwelling due to climate change will cause
the continental shelf-slope region in the nwGOM to acidify faster than other tropical and

subtropical seas. In order to test this hypothesis wave gliders, in -stiu sensor along withe underway measurements from research vessels will measure carbonated chemistry in in surface and shallow  waters. Modeling will be used tp integrate the chemical signals into the models to hindcast/predict spatia; and temporal variation of the OA signal for the the optimization of monitoring design and implementation.