SEVERAL TOPICS SURROUNDING HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS ON THE US WEST COAST
Abstract
Harmful Algal Blooms are not new to the West Coast region, but changing ocean conditions
are increasing the frequency of Harmful Algal Bloom events. This Masters Project is
split into three separate projects, each examining a topic surrounding Harmful Algal
Blooms on the West Coast. The first project examines the two policy options for receiving
disaster assistance to mitigate the impacts of Harmful Algal Blooms. Communities impacted
by a Harmful Algal Bloom may request NOAA for one of two disaster determinations:
1) a Fishery Disaster determination or 2) a Harmful Algal Bloom or Hypoxia Event of
National Significance (HHENS) determination. I conducted a policy analysis that maps
the criteria used in NOAA’s determinations to the “Attributes” in the 4Cs Human Well-being
Framework. Fishery Disaster determinations are mainly concerned with the economic
impacts of a Harmful Algal Bloom on the commercial fishery. HHENS determinations,
a relatively new policy option, considers a wider range of impacts on commercial,
recreational, and subsistence communities. The second project examines two resilience
strategies that utilize disaster assistance to mitigate Harmful Algal Bloom impacts:
1) Direct Assistance to impacted fishers and processors and 2) Investment in Infrastructure
and Knowledge Production. I wrote a Strategy Narrative describing strategy outcomes
based on the first project’s policy review and scientific literature surrounding the
2015 HAB event. The first strategy narrative describes how Direct Assistance increases
financial security and decreases the financial-related stress of impacted fishers.
The second strategy describes how Investment in Infrastructure and Knowledge Production
increases the knowledge and technological capacity of the fishing community. The third
project is an independent project that uses ArcGIS Pro and Python to identify Algal
Bloom hotspots off California between 2005 and 2020 and where Domoic Acid Events are
frequently occurring in the same period. Results showed that algal productivity is
generally higher in Northern and Central CA with a major hotspot near the Monterey-Santa
Cruz County border. Fishing dependencies of CA Counties are also calculated from NOAA’s
CSVI to identify communities “vulnerable” to Harmful Algal Blooms.
Type
Master's projectDepartment
Nicholas School of the EnvironmentPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/27156Citation
Cha, Curtis (2023). SEVERAL TOPICS SURROUNDING HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS ON THE US WEST COAST. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/27156.Collections
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