California Ocean & Coastal Ecosystem Workgroup
Announcements
- What is Ocean Health?
The California Ocean Protection Council and Ocean Science Trust; cohosted a public workshop on August 27, 2014: Sharing Your Perspective on Envisioning California's Ocean Health. The event brought together scientists, decision makers, tribal representatives, and constituents alike to share perspectives about what ocean health means across our diverse coastal communities. Rife with spirited discussion, we learned much from participants, but an underlying theme did emerge: ocean health can be a unifying concept.
Background
The California Water Quality Monitoring Council has identified ocean and coastal ecosystem health as a prime area for coordination of monitoring and assessment activities of organizations both within and outside California government.
Recognizing their long-term collaborative efforts to coordinate monitoring and reporting of rocky intertidal coastal habitats along the west coast of North America, the Monitoring Council partnered with the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe) to produce a web portal highlighting that organization's California data and information.
In May of 2014, the California Ocean Science Trust released My Water Quality Ocean Portal Roadmap, a scoping document outlining steps toward the formation of one or more collaborative ocean and coastal ecosystem health workgroups and the development of related My Water Quality portals. A number of key topics were identified around which initial coordination could be explored:
- Marine Protected Areas and Areas of Special Biological Significance - bridging the topics of fisheries and water quality
- Ocean acidification
- Harmful algal blooms
- Marine debris
The Roadmap was presented to the Monitoring Council at their May 28, 2014 meeting (meeting notes, see Item #4) and was well received.
Membership
A scoping group was assembled by the California Ocean Science Trust to develop the Ocean Portal Roadmap. Membership of the scoping group included the following individuals:
- Sara Aminzadeh
California Coastkeeper Alliance - Brock Bernstein
Independent consultant - Julia Coates
California Ocean Science Trust and Southern California Coastal Water Research Project - Tony Hale
San Francisco Estuary Institute - John Hunt
University of California at Davis - Kris Jones
California Department of Water Resources and Monitoring Council Assistant Director - Aaron McGregor
California Ocean Science Trust - Ken Schiff
Southern California Coastal Water Research Project - Liz Whiteman
California Ocean Science Trust
Meetings
- Future workgroup meeting information will be posted here.
Products and Tools
- My Water Quality Ocean Portal Roadmap - prepared for the California Ocean Science Trust
A scoping document outlining steps toward formation of one or more collaborative ocean and coastal ecosystem health workgroups and My Water Quality portals (5/16/14)
More Information
- For additional information on the Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem Workgroup effort, contact Monitoring Council Assistant Director, Kris Jones - email: Kristopher.Jones@water.ca.gov or phone: (916) 376-9756