Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems

The diversity of life in the sea is critical to the health of ocean ecosystems that support living resources and therefore essential to the economic, nutritional, recreational, and health needs of billions of people. Yet there is evidence that the biodiversity of many marine habitats is being altered in response to a changing climate and human activity. Understanding this change, and forecasting where changes are likely to occur, requires monitoring of organism diversity, distribution, abundance, and health. It requires a minimum of measurements including productivity and ecosystem function, species composition, allelic diversity, and genetic expression. These observations need to be complemented with metrics of environmental change and socio-economic drivers. However, existing global ocean observing infrastructure and programs often do not explicitly consider observations of marine biodiversity and associated processes. Much effort has focused on physical, chemical and some biogeochemical measurements.

Ocean acidification has serious implications for the economy and ecology of the Pacific Northwest United States. A combination of factors renders the Pacific coast and coastal estuaries particularly vulnerable to acidified water. The Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, NANOOS, the Regional Association of the United States Integrated Ocean Observing System, IOOS, is set up to deliver coastal data to serve the needs and decisions of its region. NANOOS has worked through IOOS with the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, NOAA PMEL, academic, local, and commercial and tribal shellfish growing partners to provide existing observing assets to accommodate pCO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> and pH sensors, to deliver data streams from these and other providers, including that from sensors in shellfish hatcheries, and to network this capacity regionally and nationally. This increase in data access regarding OA is of value to scientists, managers, educators, and shellfish growers who are especially appreciative of the near real-time readouts of the data, upon which to make hatchery and remote setting decisions. This is a regional example of NANOOS and IOOS contributions to societal impacts from ocean acidification.