Meeting Environmental and Natural Resource Challenges through Systems Research and Decision Support Models

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This research will help meet a key challenge facing society: finding the right balance of economic development, through natural resource use, and the health of our environment and ecosystems. The focus is on oceans, coasts and fisheries, across Canada and globally, motivated by the widespread need to deal with rapidly increasing development pressures on coasts and oceans. Better, more holistic methods can help in meeting the challenge – to assess and predict sustainability of human uses of natural resources, and resilience of the corresponding ecosystems and human systems, leading to effective management plans. To this end, my research will examine interactions between marine/coastal resource industries and environmental conservation, and the effectiveness of resource management, through use of interdisciplinary analyses, indicator frameworks, dynamic models and decision support approaches. Ultimately, I hope to contribute knowledge for improved sustainable development, and for management and conservation of fisheries, coasts and ocean areas. Specifically I will address two key topic areas: 1. Support for Managing Fishery, Coastal and Marine Systems. I will aim to add to our understanding of the structure and dynamics underlying marine environmental and resource challenges, and thus provide improved support for decisions to be made in fishery, ocean and coastal management, and in responding to marine disasters and climate change. Specifically, I aim to contribute to the theory and practice of local-level (and community-based) coastal management, incorporating the structure, dynamics and uncertainties of local coastal systems, including industry sectors and communities, and addressing both risk and resilience in these systems. 2. Fishery Interactions with Protected Areas and Climate Change. I will seek to provide support for fishery and conservation decision-making through analyses of how fisheries interact with two major forces – (i) the increasing effects of climate change in marine systems, and (ii) the wide-ranging trend to implement marine protected areas (MPAs), with restrictions on human uses. This work will use integrated models to support decision-makers cope with MPA implementation and fishery-based climate adaptation. The anticipated significance of my work will arise through production of widely-utilized tools that will (1) enable resource industries, and society, to better evaluate environmental and sustainability impacts, and (2) enable government agencies to improve the efficiency of environmental and natural resource management, and the long-term performance of resource systems. These tools and methods will help in formulating and assessing sustainable development strategies in fisheries, ocean and coastal systems, addressing two urgent needs, in Canada and globally. First, I will provide guidance for 3 major global initiatives: the ecosystem approach to fisheries, marine protected areas, and marine spatial planning. Second, my work on local coastal/ocean management will contribute to resolving the mis-match between the need to deal with local issues and the larger scale at which information is usually collected and analysed. For all this research, I will continue to work closely with the fishing sector, other ocean use sectors, First Nations and coastal communities, as well as governments and international bodies. Finally, the impact of the research will be enhanced by my interdisciplinary approach, which is also important to the training component of this research – building the capacity of students and postdoctoral fellows to use interdisciplinary methods in addressing key environmental and sustainable development challenges.