The California, University of Southern California, Oregon, and Washington Sea Grant programs are jointly interested in coordinated research efforts that bring together researchers from across the region to address specific social science issues of regional priority. Encompassing the shorelines, estuaries and offshore ocean environments from Washington to California, West Coast marine and coastal ecosystems are diverse and rapidly changing. Expanding pressures from population growth, changing land use and large-scale environmental shifts are affecting the natural resources and biogeochemical processes that sustain coastal regions and the communities, businesses and people that rely upon them.
The four West Coast programs are interested in regional proposals that address social science questions related to national Sea Grant goals for healthy coastal ecosystems, sustainable coastal development, safe sustainable seafood supply and hazard resilient coastal communities. Alignment is encouraged with state, regional and national research priorities (see .pdf for links). The range of potential marine and coastal research topics includes, but is not limited to:
- Coastal and marine spatial planning and its application to emerging issues like marine renewable energy
- Use and valuation of coastal and marine resources, including fisheries, and implications for
management - Relationships among social, economic and ecological sustainability and resilience of coastal regions
- Patterns, processes and social institutions that underlie changing coastal demographics and economies
- Human roles and responses to regional climate and environmental changes such as severe storms, coastal inundation, ocean acidification, sea level rise and shifting circulation and marine population distributions
- Community and stakeholder engagement, visioning, social learning and other methods to support coastal sustainability and environmental protection
