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.

The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System is seeking to fund projects which advance new or existing solutions that address long standing and emerging coastal modeling and forecast product development challenges. This announcement specifically funds activities needed to progress through the transitional stages from research toward full operations (such as system integration, testing, validation, and verification).

The priorities of  this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) are summarized as follows: 

• Improving parameterizations of coastal physics in community models

• Coupling the National Water Mode​l (Office of Water Prediction)  with ocean circulation models to understand and predict the combined effects of land processes (riverine input/land runoff) and ocean circulation (wind/waves/tides) on coastal inundation, sediment transport and water quality in the coastal zone

• Approaches to improve performance, speed, or accuracy of data assimilation algorithms

• Model evaluation and/or  development of acceptance metrics for operational models

• Finding efficient approaches to transition ecosystem models (including, but not limited to, ocean acidification, harmful algal bloom (HAB), hypoxia, and pathogens) for incorporation into existing physical modeling frameworks

Investigators are highly encouraged to visit the U.S. IOOS Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed website for more information about the Testbed: https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/COMT/ and https://ioos.us/comt/.

Full proposals must be received no later than 11:59 PM Eastern on Friday, 26 February 2021

Formal Notice of Funding Opportunity on grants.gov