January PI Spotlight: Dr. Marisol García-Reyes |
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| Ocean Observing Tools: Climate Indicators, Atmospheric Trends,
Buoy Measurements, Shore-station Measurements
Published January 23, 2025 by Makenna Martin
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“Each of us has a role to play in our ecosystem.
Ecosystem indicators allow users to access the information they need without requiring them to become data experts.”
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SCCOOS Principal Investigator, Dr. Marisol García-Reyes has always been intrigued by how to accurately quantify the ocean ecosystem, asking questions like: What data should we collect? What does this data tell us? and Do the data accurately represent the environment? Her work as Principal Scientist at Farallon Institute allows her to explore these questions by researching observations of physical ocean attributes, such as water movement, temperature, and salinity. These variables are used, among others, to create the Multivariate Ocean Climate Indicator (MOCI) for California.
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Image: The data sources and applications for the Multivariate Ocean Climate Indicator (MOCI) for California.
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The MOCI, created in 2014, and now maintained as a collaboration between SCCOOS, Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), and the Farallon Institute, is a type of ecosystem indicator, a metric created by experts to track ecosystem health. These indicators use multiple sources of relevant data to create a more holistic view of the environment, rather than just one piece of the puzzle. For example, the MOCI uses many different environmental variables, collected from buoys and shore stations, including sea level, wind, water density, sea surface temperature, air temperature, and regional atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. By integrating these data, the MOCI gives us an index, a kind of “score”, which enables researchers to compare conditions over time and track changes in the coastal environment of California.
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This index is useful for scientists and managers because the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) is particularly complex, primarily due to the process of upwelling. Upwelling is a seasonal, wind-driven flow of deep ocean water, naturally pumped up into shallower coastal regions, which impacts water temperature, density, and chemical composition. Moreover, the CCE is impacted by regional and global factors such as ocean warming. As a result, coastal conditions in California are highly variable, favoring different kinds of fish and animal species and influencing the marine ecosystem in ways that can be difficult for coastal managers to predict.
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Images: Diagram depicting coastal upwelling (Illustration by GEOMAR); map showing the prevailing currents along the CA coast.
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Dr. García-Reyes has studied coastal upwelling and its variability for over 15 years, “As an oceanographer, I find this complexity fascinating, but I recognize that not everyone shares this same perspective. [...] Our goal for the MOCI was to create a single, synthesized indicator that captured the most important sources of variability relevant to ecosystem change, while ensuring it is simple to obtain and interpret for management, research, and conservation purposes.” Coastal managers can use this measure to help make important decisions that impact the ecosystem and the public, such as in fisheries and in protecting endangered species.
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Images: Sardine harvest being measured at NOAA (Photo by NOAA Fisheries); Two blue whales swim in a Marine Protected Area (Photo by Elliott Hazen/NOAA Fisheries).
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NOAA Fisheries help balance human needs with ecosystem resilience by conducting research and making recommendations to resource managers for coastal activities like fishing, harvesting, and use of natural resources. Scientists and decision makers involved in managing fisheries and other living marine resources often rely on indicators like the MOCI to better understand and communicate what is driving the ecosystems they manage. Ecosystem indicators are used in conjunction with other data and research efforts in order to recommend commercial fishing targets, recommend protections for biologically important habitats and Marine Protected Areas, and monitor endangered species of fish and other marine animals (e.g., marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds).
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“The MOCI blends indicators of big picture, large-scale dynamics with observations that broadly capture local and regional ocean dynamics. It's this creative and rigorous synthesis across scales that makes multivariate indicators so useful in understanding how climate variability influences ecosystems,” reports Dr. Eric Bjorkstedt, a research scientist with the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center stationed at California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), Humboldt, where he leads research on coastal plankton and their ecosystems. Eric also serves as the CeNCOOS Governing Council Chair and member of their Executive Committee.
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Dr. García-Reyes notes that developing this index is still a challenge, with hurdles surrounding data quality and access. However, this is precisely why she believes these indicators are essential to produce and maintain; multivariate ecosystem indicators like MOCI help capture complexity and variability while remaining easy to acquire, interpret, and apply.
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Keep an eye out for next month's SCCOOS Spotlight to learn about another of our Principal Investigators and community data-users!
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Previous editions of SCCOOS Spotlight
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