Linking Land, Sea, and Society through Integrative Coastal Research

Abstract

The Pacific coastal temperate rainforest (PCTR) ecosystem extends from Oregon to southcentral Alaska, and includes the largest remaining old-growth forests in North America, supports some of the most robust fisheries on the continent, and is home to tens of thousands of people who depend on a resource and tourism-based economy for their livelihoods. It is also a region characterized by an intricate geologic and evolutionary past, a rich cultural history, and complex linkages among ecosystem components. This expansive and varied ecosystem is also a vulnerable one: because the average winter temperature at sea level hovers around freezing, the PCTR is highly sensitive to small shifts in climate. Warming temperatures will further speed up glacial melt, precipitation will increasingly fall as rain rather than snow; and seasonal snow cover will become infrequent except at higher elevations. All of these expected (and already occurring) changes will have significant and largely unstudied implications for ecological functioning. There are implications for communities in and around the PCTR that rely heavily on natural resources for economic and subsistence livelihoods: timber production, fisheries and mariculture, hydropower production, and ecotourism opportunities will all be affected. Through interdisciplinary research on ecosystem linkages and driving causes of change in this landscape, ACRC addresses questions about the current and future ecology of the PCTR, all through the lens of natural resource management and climate change.