Environmental Risk and Impact Assessment in Tongoy Bay, Chile and San Quintin Bay, Baja California

The CEAZA Scientific Center launched the Planificación de la Acción Climática (Climate Action Planning - CLAP) research program in the Coquimbo Region of Chile to inform and implement climate action planning at the regional, national, and international level. This 5-year project was designed to improve the region’s ability to generate predictions of future climate change effects at various scales. To achieve this, CLAP aims to advance current observational and modeling capabilities in geophysics and ecology, and to evaluate the sensitivity of marine ecosystems to climate change. By providing new knowledge of the biosphere, CLAP will deliver science-based products for addressing the impacts of climate variability on targeted ecosystem services.  

Socio-ecological systems reflect the highly interconnected relationship between human societies and local ecosystems. This interdependence impacts the resilience of any such system. Social scientists and biological researchers from CLAP and OARS are teaming up to explore the sensitivity of socio-ecological systems to the effects of climate change in Tongoy Bay, Chile and Bahia San Quintin, Mexico. At both of these pilot sites, interdisciplinary teams are conducting social-ecological vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessments in aquaculture communities that are impacted by extreme climatic events like ENSO. Researchers will co-produce physical climate storylines (PCS) with aquaculture industries associated with low-likelihood, high-impact events, and implement adequate environmental observations to select the best adaptive strategies for local sustainability and resilience.

Logistics

    • Véronique Garçon, CNRS/IPGP, Paris, France, 

    • Jose Martin Hernandez Ayon, UABC, Ensenada, Mexico, 

    • Boris Dewitte, CEAZA, La Serena, Chile

    • Rodrigo Estevez, Sociologist, Univ. Santo Tomas, Chile

    • Pilar Molina, Head of Knowledge Transfer, CEAZA, Chile

    • Victor Aguilera, Oceanographer, CEAZA, Chile

    • Claudio Vasquez, CEAZA Business administrator, CEAZA, Chile

    • Kirsten Isensee, Oceanographer, IOC UNESCO, Paris, France

    • Linda Barranco, Oceanographer, CEAZA, Chile 

    • Stefan Gelcich, Ecologist, PUC, Chile

  • January 2021- December 2025

    The CEAZA Scientific Center launched the Planificación de la Acción Climática (Climate Action Planning - CLAP) research program in the Coquimbo Region of Chile in January 2021. This 5-year program will conclude in December 2025. 

    In November 2023, IOC-UNESCO co-hosted an International Summer School with OARS, GOOD, CLAP, and COPAS. After the success of a Stakeholder Day during this summer school, special emphasis was placed on the social-ecological vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessment being conducted over selected marine dependent human communities as part of the CLAP project. 

    Since then, IOC-UNESCO has supported two more workshops, and consultants are now writing a social science synthesis of lessons learned. The future of this project involves developing physical climate storylines (PCS) in co-production efforts with aquaculture industries, and implementing adequate environmental observations to select the best adaptive strategies.

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  • Two years of continuous measurements (each 30 min) for pH and monthly discrete samples for high precision pH and TA measurements were collected.

  • High precision pH and total alkalinity (TA) measurements were collected.

  • Quality control tests for continuous data involve calibration at constant temperature (25°C, for pH), data pre-processing to identify outliers, and comparison with higher precision measurements of pH. 

    The latter is estimated from TA and pH (NBS) data (besides temperature and salinity) with CO2CYS. The accuracy of TA measurements is 2-3 μmol kg-1, and both TA and pH involve the utilization of CRM.

Objectives

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Challenges

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Lessons Learned

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