Developing Dynamic Ecological Impact Assessment Models to Protect Canada's Oceans in the Emerging Blue Economy

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The Government of Canada is developing a Blue Economy plan to grow Canada's ocean economy through emerging ocean industries (such as seabed mining and aquaculture) while protecting Canada's marine ecosystems in the face of new development and climate change. Meeting the promise of the Blue Economy requires natural science tools and approaches of ecological risk assessment in order to make informed decisions that avoid unnecessary impacts on the environment. However, understanding how new industrial development and climate impacts interact to affect ecosystems is an emerging area of study, and underappreciating the risk posed by new developments interacting with climate change and may lead to Blue Economy plans to fail. Causal models of impacts, called "impact pathway models" have been used successfully to understand and aid decisions to mitigate impacts, since they connect human activities and global change phenomena with specific pressures (processes that pose ecological hazards) and ecological characteristics (such as species). However, impact pathway models are rarely explored through a dynamic lens, and this research program will develop approaches to address risks from emerging industries and in contexts of continuous hazard exposure (such as climate change). It will also advance our understanding of evolving vulnerabilities of species at risk to emerging industries through linking impact pathway models with life-stage models. The objectives of this program are to develop new models and methods for assessing impact on endangered marine species and culturally important species in Canada ocean ecosystems. It will compile existing data on legacy, current, and emerging industries and climate impacts, and the associated pressures. The program will also develop dynamic network models to understand the impact pathways from human activities, their interactions, and how the mechanisms and magnitude of impacts change with new developments. Network models will also be developed relative to endangered species at different life stages to explore how species vulnerabilities can change relative to multiple activities and pressures over time. Finally, it will develop dynamic hierarchical Bayesian models to assess the interaction between climate hazards and emerging development on endangered marine species. This program will support two PhD students and one MSc student, as well as two undergraduate research assistants through database creation, model and tool development, and scenario analysis. I have a track record of advancing ecological risk assessment and am connected to a collaborative network all actively advancing the science of ecological risk assessment, including many researcher colleagues at Memorial University and it's Marine Institute. Overall, this program aims to provide scientific decision support tools for Blue Economy planning (now underway in Canada and abroad) to benefit from ocean development while ensuring ecological conservation.