Humboldt State University Joins Oregon State and University of Washington to Launch a Research Hub for Coastal Resiliency
This is a press release from HSU News & Information:
HSU graduate student Kristina Kunkel measures floodwaters in King Salmon on the North Coast during a king tide. HSU professors and other universities will collaborate on research dedicated to coastal resilience in the Cascadia region.
Humboldt State University will join a coastal resiliency research hub led by Oregon State University and the University of Washington focused on the impact of earthquakes, coastal erosion, and climate change on coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest.
With a total of $18.9 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub, or Cascadia CoPes Hub, will coordinate research in Pacific Northwest coastal communities between numerous academic and government organizations to inform and enable integrated hazard assessment, mitigation, and adaptation. Jennifer Marlow and Laurie Richmond, faculty from the department of Environmental Science and Management, will be leading HSU’s connection toCascadia CoPes Hub.
Nearly 40% of the U.S population lives within a coastal county. The Pacific Northwest coastline is at significant risk of earthquakes from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which stretches nearly 700 miles along the coast from Cape Mendocino in California to Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island, Canada.
In addition to this acute threat, the region also faces chronic risks such as coastal erosion, regional flooding, and sea level rise due to climate change, said Peter Ruggiero, the project’s principal investigator and a professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
According to Ruggiero, the potential for collaboration among Pacific Northwest universities and coastal communities is one pathway to coastal resilience. “There are many dimensions to resilience, including quality of life, economics, health, engineering, and more,” he said. “This research hub is a way to bring together many groups with interest in coastal resilience who have not had the resources to work together on these issues before.”
Locally, Humboldt Bay is experiencing the fastest rate of relative sea-level rise on the West Coast, with sea level projected to rise as much as three feet by 2060. “These changes could lead to severe social, cultural, economic, and environmental consequences if we don’t make plans to adapt, but these changes also bring opportunities for transformative change,” says Richmond.
HSU will receive $450,000 from the NSF to support student and faculty research into coastal resilience and hazards in California’s North Coast region. Participation will also allow the HSU team to collaborate with other hub researchers on topics focused on the integration of local and traditional ecological knowledge into hazard response planning, and equitable adaptation governance and policy. The grant includes support for local community partners including the Wiyot Tribe and Humboldt County.
“This NSF grant sees past the traditional boundaries of universities and disciplines, and aligns itself with a more equitable 21st century vision that sees innovation, creativity, and collaboration with communities and tribes as central to scientific advancement,” says Marlow. “The project also embodies HSU’s future as a polytech by tackling the most urgent issues facing our community in ways critically informed by local culture and diverse values.”
Richmond and Marlow are excited that the grant will provide the opportunity to develop and extend the work of the HSU Sea Level Rise Initiative (SLRI). The effort brings together HSU, local tribes, government agencies, and community groups to develop sea-level rise research and planning that informs equitable, sustainable, and community-centered local climate action. Through the research hub, HSU students and faculty connected to the SLRI will have the opportunity to work with scholars and community experts in the Cascadia region to learn from one another about coastal hazards and coastal resilience.
“This issue requires a regional approach,” said Ann Bostrom, a co-principal investigator and UW professor of Public Policy and Governance. “This new research hub has the potential to achieve significant advances across the hazard sciences — from the understanding of governance systems, to having a four-dimensional understanding of Cascadia faults and how they work, to new ways of engaging with communities. There are a lot of aspects built into this project that have us all excited.”
Additional partners on the project include the University of Oregon, OSU-based Oregon Sea Grant, Washington Sea Grant, the William D. Ruckleshaus Center at Washington State University, the United States Geological Survey, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Georgia Tech, and Arizona State University.
“Understanding not only who is vulnerable to coastal hazards, but how future adaptation and mitigation measures can impact different segments of the population, particularly underrepresented populations, is key to developing measures that are equitable and just,” said Jenna Tilt, an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences who is part of the research hub leadership team. “This research hub provides the resources to do just that.”
Ruggiero says that the project emphasizes incorporating traditional ecological knowledge from the region’s Native American tribes as well as local ecological knowledge from fishermen, farmers, and others who have personal experience with the coast, providing unique perspectives on what coastal resiliency means to their communities.
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One thing that really helps with resilience is an endless stream of taxpayer money.
With funding and grants for all salaried committee members to research and debate and consider potential planning processes to better understand how to sustainably ensure that endless stream….
Right we don’t want any research on how to protect coastal communities from future effects of climate change. Those people in King Salmon can just change their name to Venice and trade their cars for boats. Climate change is affecting coastal communities across the world. Any work that addresses that problem is most welcome. Also you “inlanders” are already experiencing climate change with drought and wildfires. So science is beneficial to everybody. I also see they will be doing studies of the Cascadia faults. Remember the 1980 earhquake that hit up here? No warning for that ,but researchers such as these people are working on early detection systems.
Umm…King Salmon is done. Get a boat if you don’t have one. There- I figured that out with…hmm…Zero dollars! You’re welcome
Along those same lines, don’t build in or just above flood and/or tsunami zones. Voila! Tragedy averted.
Well of course, it’s incumbent upon the people who actually produce viable products and services to finance their hobbies. It’s only fair.
Sigh…this is a very good thing. Aside from the actual work that will be done, it also officially brings in the only University in California that lies within the Cascadia Subduction Zone (which can only be good for HSU).
Not sure about UW, but Oregon State is a leader in studying the sleeping dragon right off shore from all of us. As well as sea level rise and it’s impact on costal communities.
You may be confusing “actual work” with committees and administrative pork. I am in full support of actual work. In fact I do it every day. But many of the reports and graphs describing what actual work the actual workers should do is …fiddling while the world burns at taxpayer expense.
I am not confusing anything. I have worked for OSU’s Marine Science Center. Hell I graduated from OSU. I have much more understanding how it works than you do. I do get amused by folks whose first knee-jerk response is to go “but, but..the taxpayers!!!.
Another cool thing is that OSU is a land grant institution. The primary mission is to disseminate practical information to the public. Whatever comes out of this research hub will be available to the public.
Also, know how I know you have never had to write a grant request? Or that getting grants doesn’t mean you are cutting a fat hog?
Full disclosure: I, too, am a taxpayer.
Don’t confuse them with facts, it causes them to run into walls. Test
And don’t confuse facts with opinions or perspective
Do you always find it useful to lump folks into groups and judge them en masse? Is that the way the enlightened do it?
You’re right about one thing. I have never written grant proposals. We have used our own money and pooled resources to replant and rehab habitat that was left destroyed. I also graduated from HSU- it’s not that hard unless you do it while working full-time at the mill like I did. What I learned in upper division classes was that begging from the government and waiting for them was not as effective as just going after the work. I knew good weed growers in Mendocino who wanted to buy old growth habitat to save and rehab land that had been trashed. I’d say the only “overhead” we wasted was some cases of beer. Every government project I have seen my old college friends work on over the last 30 years has been top-heavy with administrators and/or ridiculous bidding processes that yes- waste the taxpayers money but more importantly waste the money that could have been spent on the actual work they were claiming to be doing. So quit being so almighty please. I do have an educated and experienced perspective on government/university waste. It’s just different from your yours because I left that crap behind. I went directly into the field instead of typing at a laptop and having virtual meetings about communication objectives with bullet points and such….
Ms Kemp (Kim) when I try to use the edit symbol, my comment just disappears. But when I hit cancel it reappears. I am using a Chromebook.
If you have a slow connection, it might take a moment to reappear. Try a test comment. Post it. Then try to edit it. Wait for at least a minute. See if that is the problem.
Nope. Waited 2 minutes still not working. I am running about 10-11 MB with a AT&T connection. Broadband not DSL. Works OK on my iphone but still not working with ipad either. This Chromebook glitch is recent.
Dang it…
Don’t worry about it. I just need to make sure I edit my comment before posting. And can always use iphone, it’s really not that important.
Still ironing out some of the glitches. We’re getting there though.
The runaway-backspace-key glitch seems to be resolved…
Not sure if anyone else was experiencing that one…
I hadn’t heard of anyone else having the issue but I’m glad it is fixed.
King Salmon was built on fill. Perhaps the sea has risen some but here it would be fair to say the fill has settled. Not everywhere but in many places.
The restored wetland behind Braecut still does not get significant tidal infusion despite being “restored” well over 20 years ago.
The trouble with a lot of these models is it doesn’t take into account that the earth also rises and falls along the coast.