ANNEX VI

COASTAL GOOS : WHAT IS IT AND WHY DO IT?

The coastal zone from drainage basin to coastal ocean is a mosaic of complex, interacting ecosystems that include terrestrial (watersheds), wetland, freshwater, estuarine and marine habitats. As human populations increase in coastal watersheds, the combined effects of global climate change and human alterations of the environment are expected to be especially pronounced in coastal aquatic ecosystems where inputs of materials and energy from land, sea, air, and people converge. Nutrient and contaminant inputs, the exploitation of living resources, translocation of non indigenous species, and habitat disturbance and loss are among the most ubiquitous and sustained human alterations of coastal ecosystems that are affecting the quality of life and increasing the vulnerability of human populations to natural disasters.

Event scale climatic events and longer term climate change will compound the effects of local and regional human alterations of the environment through sea-level rise and an increase in storm-surge hazards and possible changes in the frequency and intensity of storms. Over the next 100 years, rising sea-level may inundate large areas of coastal wetlands and a significant portion of dry land less than 50 cm above sea-level. In many areas, wetlands and beaches may be squeezed between advancing sea level and engineered structures. Rising sea-level will also raise the base for storm surges and substantially increase the size of the 100-yr flood plain. Assuming current development trends continue, flood damages incurred by properties subject to sea-level rise are projected to increase by as much as 50% for a 30-cm rise and by over 100% for a 90-cm rise. In addition, saltwater is likely to intrude further inland and upstream threatening drinking water supplies, and projected increases in water temperature and changes in freshwater flows are likely to have profound local and regional affects on the biodiversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems.

A recent analysis of "ecosystem services" concluded that their global value, in terms of the cost of reproducing them in an artificial biosphere, is on the order of $30 trillion or nearly twice the cumulative global GNP. In this context, services provided by coastal aquatic ecosystems (Table 1) were valued at $11.4 trillion with terrestrial ($11.1 trillion) and oceanic ($7.5 trillion) ecosystems accounting for the rest. Although such analyses of ecosystem services and current predictions of climate change and its effects are controversial, they underscore the importance and urgency of achieving a more holistic, predictive understanding of the responses of coastal ecosystems to inputs from terrestrial, atmospheric, oceanic, and human sources.

The achievement of such a predictive understanding of coastal ecosystems depends on the development of regional to global networks that link observation and analysis in more effective and timely ways. However, the specific goals and the means of implementing GOOS have been subject to much debate and progress has been slow, largely because implementing the concept of GOOS in the coastal zone requires major changes in the way we do business in two important ways:

1. The environmental research community in the coastal zone has been too fragmented internally (oceanographers, meteorologists, estuarine ecologists, terrestrial and land-scape ecologists) and too isolated from the community at large. GOOS must work to promote more effective linkages between these groups. In addition, so-called user groups (policy makers, environmental and resource managers, NGOs, the business community, and the public in general) are not getting the scientific information they need to make informed decisions in a timely fashion. GOOS must work to inform the scientific community of user needs, to inform users of the capabilities of science to provide the information they need, and to ensure that the products of science satisfy these needs.
2. With few exceptions, research to document patterns in coastal ecosystems has emphasized observations and experiments on small (local) scales. For logistic reasons, experiments and observations are generally too limited in time a space to provide synoptic information on ecological phenomena across the range of scales that characterize biological and physical variability in coastal ecosystems and their adjacent watersheds and oceans. Even in the age of satellites, we remain stuck in our parochial local ecosystems muddling with the dilemma of whether changes reflect the spatial scale of observation or time-dependent changes in situ. This problem is especially acute in coastal ecosystems which are subject to larger scale forcings and have rapid response times relative to terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems and where the notion that every system is unique often dominates the conduct of research and monitoring programmes. The scarcity of observations on coastal ecosystems of sufficient duration, spatial extent, and resolution and the lack of knowledge (theoretical and empirical) on the propagation of variability across scales through and among coastal ecosystems are major barriers to the goals of predicting environmental changes and their ecological consequences.

The ultimate goal of Coastal GOOS is to encourage and support the development and application of nowcasting, forecasting and predictive capabilities as a means of preserving healthy coastal environments, promoting sustainable uses of coastal resources, mitigating coastal hazards, and ensuring safe and efficient marine operations. To these ends, Coastal GOOS should design and implement a strategy that promotes (i) the use of remote and in situ sensing technologies and real-time data acquisition and analysis; (ii) more timely exchange of information and knowledge among terrestrial and estuarine ecologists, oceanographers and meteorologist working in the coastal zone; (iii) the development of models to improve the understanding of coastal ecosystem structure and function and to forecast change; (iv) more effective linkages between environmental science and society with the goal of producing products that meet the needs of user groups outside the scientific community; and (v) increased public awareness of the issues, especially as related to the interactive effects of climate change and human activities in the coastal zone.