We conducted a spatially explicit vulnerability assessment of the forest industry in Maine, USA, to climate change in an effort to (1) advance a spatial framework for assessing forest industry vulnerability and (2) increase our understanding of Maine’s specific vulnerabilities to climate change in order to guide decision-making. We applied a bottom-up indicator approach to evaluate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climate change using both biophysical and social indicators, largely driven by participatory processes. Our approach enabled us to synthesize and aggregate indicators of regional importance to evaluate vulnerability, allowing us to simultaneously examine combinations of potential changes. We found that each Maine county had its own unique combination of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indicators, with overall vulnerability highest in the rural northern and western parts of the state, where forest industry activities are most prevalent. However, results also indicate that although increased stress from climate-related changes can negatively affect Maine’s forest via high exposure, reduced sensitivities and increased adaptive capacity have the potential to largely decrease overall vulnerability in many parts of the state.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources (MEDMR) is a state agency tasked with developing, conserving, researching, and promoting commercial and recreational marine fisheries across Maine’s vast coastline. Close collaborations with industry members in each of the 30 or more fisheries that support Maine’s coastal economy are central to MEDMR’s efforts to address this suite of tasks. Here we reflect on recent decades of MEDMR's work and demonstrate how MEDMR fisheries research programmes are preparing for an uncertain future through the lens of three broadly applicable climate-driven challenges: (1) a rapidly changing marine ecosystem; (2) recommendations driven by state and federal climate initiatives; and (3) the need to share institutional knowledge with a new generation of marine resource scientists. We do this by highlighting our scientific and co-management approach to coastal Maine fisheries that have prospered, declined, or followed a unique trend over the last 25+ years. We use these examples to illustrate our lessons learned when studying a diverse array of fisheries, highlight the importance of collaborations with academia and the commercial fishing industry, and share our recommendations to marine resource scientists for addressing the climate-driven challenges that motivated this work.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10451587
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ICES Journal of Marine Science
- Volume:
- 80
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 1054-3139
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 2074-2086
- Size(s):
- ["p. 2074-2086"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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