Society is poorly prepared for changing coastal conditions and the impacts of climate change, with related vulnerabilities being particularly acute for underserved, overburdened, and frontline…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded a $4,909,974 Cooperative Agreement under the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Federal Grant Program (CFDA 11.012) to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). This funding will support MBARI's efforts to strengthen coastal and climate resilience through enhanced ocean observing, data management, and equitable service delivery. Key objectives include coordinating resilience themes across the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), improving observing capabilities for biogeochemical and ecosystem variables, and streamlining information access through cyber-infrastructure improvements. The award includes sub-grants to Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly Humboldt, and California State University Maritime Academy to support specific project components such as animal tagging, ocean modeling, harmful algal bloom monitoring, and workforce development initiatives.

Society is poorly prepared for changing coastal conditions and the impacts of climate change, with related vulnerabilities being particularly acute for underserved, overburdened, and frontline communities. The nation's blue economy, contributing an estimated $432B in gross domestic product, $730B in sales, and 2.3M high-paying jobs, remains vulnerable to impacts to infrastructure, transportation, and an untrained workforce. To build coastal and climate resilience, the US integrated ocean observing system (ioos?), including its central and northern california ocean observing system (cencoos) and 10 other regional associations, is intensifying efforts to foster resilience to ocean hazards, climate change, and enhance equitable service delivery (ESD). In california, climate change is altering the state's iconic coastline. Rising seas, colliding with more frequent and extreme storms, are drowning beaches, eroding bluffs, flooding homes and businesses, and damaging roads and other essential public infrastructure. In the last decade, californians have endured severe droughts, floods, historic wildfires, rising seas, and record temperatures all driven by climate change. Approximately 70% of california?s residents live at or near the shore, and millions more visit every year, driving the state?s $45 billion-dollar coastal economy as people come to the coast for recreation, cultural and spiritual well-being, a connection to nature, and to support their livelihoods. California has met the onset of climate change impacts with considerable progress to address coastal vulnerabilities. The ocean protection council, coastal commission and other state agencies have identified coastal hazard adaptation as one of the state?s highest priorities for the state. Strategies include integrating monitoring technologies to better address societal needs, particularly socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized communities. Here, we outline a new integrated approach for improving coastal and climate resilience, as well as equitable service delivery. This work is designed to maximize the impact of new work as well as existing initiatives and funding, including our core funding, the cencoos marine biodiversity observation network (mbon) project to enhance the blue economy, ocean vision AI (ovai), the synchro tech testbed initiative, and the state-funded initiatives to improve the availability of ocean acidification, hypoxia, AMD harmful algal bloom information. This regional proposal is led by cencoos and housed at mbari. This proposal is the cencoos response to 'topic 1' of a directed funding call for ?recapitalization, infrastructure investments and modernization of the system to support delivery of data and information services to address coastal and climate resilience needs.? A separate 'topic 2' proposal will be submitted for $45M over five years for national work along similar themes, including cencoos regional work as part of that national initiative. Cencoos CCR goals include: goal 1. Strengthen coordination of coastal and climate resilience themes across cencoos, towards increased reach, effectiveness and excellence [governance & management] coastal and climate resilience coordination, administration and project management. Goal 2. Enhance coastal and ocean observing for biogeochemical, biology, and ecosystem variables to improve understanding of climate impacts[observations] habmap - plankton sample sorting, nutrient sample processing; edna - data collection and processing for place-based management; animal tagging for place-based management. Goal 3. Streamline access to information through next generation cyberinfrastructure improvements with a focus on place-based management [data management & cyberinfrastructure (dmac)] place-based management data integration, evaluation; next generation dmac & data portal services; animal tag data processing for place-based mgmt; access cruise product support for place-based mgmt; ocean vision