ALL HANDS ON DECK: TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TO PROJECT FUTURE COASTAL CHANGE (Invited Presentation)

Providing actionable projections of multidecadal coastal change is a complex, transdisciplinary problem. Accounting for physical coastal changes that may occur requires consideration of interactions and feedbacks at varying spatial and temporal scales between oceanographic drivers (e.g. storms, sea-level rise), sediment availability, physical and biological processes within coastal ecosystems, interactions among adjacent coastal ecosystems (where change in one can impact the form and function of another), and human efforts to manage or mitigate change. Furthermore, the needs of the intended user must be considered to ensure projections are provided in a functional and applicable format, including the communication of uncertainty in ways that are both accessible and meaningful.

Over the last decade, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) coastal science teams have prioritized work with partners to help inform multidecadal coastal change research approaches and products. To do this, social and physical scientists are now engaging with partners early and often (e.g. structured-decision making; human-centered design), as well as with each other, to assess usefulness of the information we are producing. Here, several examples are discussed that illustrate advances made to way the USGS approaches transdisciplinary coastal change science. These examples show that USGS teams working with partners at varying spatial and temporal scales using flexible modeling approaches (e.g. machine learning and probabilistic frameworks) have helped to provide useable science that accounts for uncertainty while circumventing computational limitations. By exploring predictors and correlations across the landscape (e.g. elevation, wave climate, sea-level rise and erosion rates, ecosystem type, and geomorphology), these examples also highlight opportunities to improve data and observations as well as update and integrate products to inform future coastal change understanding and decision-making.