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Improving Regional and Ecosystem-Based Ocean Management

Improving Regional and Ecosystem-Based Ocean Management. Bob Tudor, DRBC Urban Coast Institute, Monmouth University April 14, 2008. Basin Facts Largest un-dammed river east of the Mississippi – 330 miles 13,539 square mile drainage 17 million water users

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Improving Regional and Ecosystem-Based Ocean Management

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  1. Improving Regional and Ecosystem-Based Ocean Management Bob Tudor, DRBC Urban Coast Institute, Monmouth University April 14, 2008

  2. Basin Facts • Largest un-dammed river east of the Mississippi – 330 miles • 13,539 square mile drainage • 17 million water users • Largest freshwater port in the world • Three reaches included in National Wild and Scenic River System • World class trout fishery in the tailwaters of the NYC reservoirs • Tremendous economic significance for the region.

  3. Why an integrated regional approach in the Delaware River Basin and Near-shore Coast? • Manageable environmental problems • Shared Resource/Shared Sense of Region • Management Issues transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries and require vertical and horizontal coordination • Partnering: Need to leverage talents and resources of multiple partners, including private sector corporations

  4. Ecosystem-based Management • Ecosystem Structure, Function, and Key Processes • Interconnectedness among Systems: • Air, Land, and Sea • River, Estuary, Ocean • Physical, Chemical and Biological • Interconnectedness among Sectors and Institutions: • Ecology, Society, Economy • Government, Academia, Private, Non-profit

  5. DRBC: Ecological Flows • Reservoir Management for Multiple Objectives: Water Supply; Flood Mitigation and Ecological Flow • Ecology Endpoints: Trout, Dwarf Wedgemussel, Warmwater Fishes, Oyster • Partners: Feds, States, TNC, TU, DRF, PDE, Academy of Natural Sciences

  6. Penta-PCB Load by Source CategorySept 2001 through March 2003

  7. PDE: Delaware Estuary Operational Needs

  8. PDE: Delaware Estuary Technical Needs

  9. Climate Change • Management Endpoints: Drinking Water, DO, Sensitive Biological Communities, Phytoplankton Community Composition • Drivers: Sea Level Rise, Salinity Changes, Shifted Rainfall/Runoff Patterns, Shifted Air Temperature and Solar Radiation • Model Scaling and Linkages: Global Climate, Regional Climate, Regional Hydrologic, Estuarine Hydrodynamic, and Regional Water Quality • Scenario Assessment and Forecasting • Partners: NOAA (NWS,NOS,OAR); EPA; Rutgers; State Resource Managers; PDE

  10. Phased Deployment and Operation of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARCOOS) 30 Co-PIs, 20 Institutions NWS WFOs Std Radar Sites Mesonet Stations LR HF Radar Sites Glider AUV Tracks USCG SLDMB Tracks NDBC Offshore Platforms CODAR Daily Average Currents

  11. MARCOOS Regional Theme 2: Ecological Decision Support - Fisheries Global Summer-Winter Temperature Difference Migratory Fish Populations SST from Satellites Subsurface T from Gliders Forecast T from Models

  12. High Profile, Region Scale Problems (Technical and Institutional) • Ecological Flows • Contaminants: PCB Loadings • Consequences of Climate Change • Sustainable Fisheries • Improve Data Coordination, Compatibility, Quality, Sharing, Access and Archiving • Grow the Monitoring and Modeling Infrastructure and Link to Improved Indicators and EBM Success Criteria • Grow Institutional Capacity for Regional Collaboration: DRBC, PDE, MACOORA

  13. Final Thoughts • Ecosystem-based management implies that: • We have measurements of ecosystem condition, and • We have scientifically sound criteria to judge whether the ecosystem is impaired or not. • Current state of ocean management using biological criteria is very inadequate. (Example- no recognized measure of benthic community diversity and biomass to measure health of this significant resource component) • MACOORA is making good progress on physical/chemical data front, more help is needed on spatial and temporal trends of biological communities. • Need to link physical/chemical data to biological data to better assess cause and effect relationships of ecosystem impairment. • Regional collaboration is needed among state and federal managers and academic researchers to develop systems-based monitoring, data management, and assessment capacity.

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