Connecting Across Boundaries: Expanding Participation in Science
When: Friday, November 6, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Capitol Foyer, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Sacramento, CA
How is science integrated into education, policy, resource management, and beyond? This event will highlight organizations and individuals working to translate, communicate, integrate, and produce knowledge that bridges the boundaries between diverse communities, making science applicable and relevant to current environmental issues.
The exhibitor event, which will be held in conjunction with the poster session, will host a variety of groups to encourage conversation about the broader impacts of science, and share an overview of their organizations and programs. Stop by and explore how you can get involved!
Confirmed Exhibitors
- California Academy of Sciences
- California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program
- California Department of Fish and Wildlife
- California Ocean Protection Council
- Marine Applied Research and Exploration (MARE)
- MPA Collaborative Network
- MPA Watch
- Natural Reserve System, University of California
- OceanSpaces
- Partnership for the Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO)
- Reef Check
Exhibitor Information
California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is natural history museum, aquarium, and planetarium. Our mission is to Explore, Explain and Sustain Life. At the Academy, we are committed to bringing the best of technology and the best in community building and education, both online and in person, to meet the challenge of the lack of biodiversity knowledge in California. We can and must involve people in building hope and a better future, as we work together to build the data set of biodiversity required to make local and global conservation decisions. For more information, visit http://www.calacademy.org/.
California Collaborative Fisheries Research Project
CCFRP is a partnership of fishers, captains, scientists, NGOs, and charter companies interested in sustainable fisheries. By combining the expertise and ideas of a diverse group, we have successfully established protocols to conduct MPA monitoring and collect information for fisheries management. This project is a collaborative effort among researchers from CA Sea Grant at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and SLOSEA/Center for Coastal Marine Sciences at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as well as the captains and crew of commercial passenger fishing vessels on the central coast of California. For more information, visit https://seagrant.mlml.calstate.edu/research/ccfrp/.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
As a natural resource management agency, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is responsible for aspects of marine protected area (MPA) governance and policy aspects including contributing marine science to the MPA design and implementation process; managing and enforcing MPAs; performing monitoring, research, and evaluation; issuing permits for activities like scientific collecting within MPAs; and performing outreach and education regarding MPAs. CDFW collaborates extensively with partners to carry out many of these activities. For more information, please visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/mpa.
California Ocean Protection Council
Created through the California Ocean Protection Act (2004), the role of the Ocean Protection Council (OPC) is to review and recommend policy, distribute and leverage state bond funding, and operate with transparency and accountability to a broad suite of stakeholders. Through the OPC Science Advisory Team and by working closely with our partner the California Ocean Science Trust, the OPC curates and synthesizes the best available science to inform decision-making by government entities. OPC seeks to improve the health of California’s oceans and coasts through supporting sustainable fisheries, improving MPA management, and building resilience to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and changing ocean chemistry. To that end, OPC serves as a convener and coordinator of state agencies to protect our coastal resources through efficient mechanisms and partnerships. By working with state, federal, tribal and local entities, the OPC seeks to protect, conserve and maintain healthy coastal and ocean ecosystems and economies for the benefit of current and future generations. For more information, please visit www.opc.ca.gov.
Marine Applied Research and Exploration (MARE)
Marine Applied Research & Exploration’s mission is to use science-based marine conservation efforts to help protect and restore the ocean’s invaluable, yet threatened resources.
Using cost-effective and innovative deepwater robotic technology and data analysis expertise, MARE assesses changes in marine life and habitat over time to inform ocean management and support wild sustainable fisheries for future generations. For more information, visit http://www.maregroup.org.
MPA Collaborative Network
The MPA Collaborative Network fosters stewardship of California’s marine protected areas by funneling the energy and resources of local experts into fourteen county based working groups covering the length of the coast. These collaboratives work together on MPA outreach/education, enforcement, and scientific monitoring projects, providing a vital local contribution to management. Members meet and work together at local levels, and are beginning to meet at regional and statewide gatherings. For more information, visit www.mpacollaborative.org
MPA Watch
The MPA Watch program is a citizen science data collection effort designed to inform coastal managers, enforcement officers and scientists about the different human uses taking place within California’s marine protected areas. The data gathered by MPA Watch volunteers is crucial for properly telling the story of California’s MPAs and surrounding coastline, as it provides scientists and managers context for ecological findings while also showing how human uses of the coast are changing as a result of the MPAs. For more information, visit http://www.mpawatch.org/.
Natural Reserve System, University of California
The University of California Natural Reserve System is a network of outdoor living laboratories and classrooms that support university-level teaching, research, and public service throughout California. Our 39 protected natural areas include more than 756,000 acres, making it the largest university-administered reserve system in the world. Reserve sites include a broad diversity of California’s ecosystems, from coastal tidepools to inland deserts, and lush wetlands to Sierra Nevada forests. The reserves also serve as a gateway to more than a million acres of public lands.
Reserve lands are secure sites protected for the long term, enabling researchers to conduct experiments without fear of disturbance to the site or equipment. They are hotspots of discovery with data archives that enable scientists to build on decades of previous research. Overnight accommodations, laboratories, Internet access, and other amenities make fieldwork more comfortable and productive. The Natural Reserve System also offers a variety of graduate student research funding. For more information, visit nrs.ucop.edu.
OceanSpaces
OceanSpaces is the home of California’s ocean community. OceanSpaces is dedicated to a vision of healthy and productive California oceans through science-informed ocean resource management and stewardship. The platform brings everyone together with a stake in the health of California’s oceans offering new opportunities for you to communicate, create and share information. A shared body of scientific knowledge enables us to make informed decisions and becomes the basis for participation in the decisions that will shape the future of our oceans. For more information, visit www.oceanspaces.org.
Partnership for the Interdisciplinary Study of Coastal Oceans (PISCO)
The Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) is a long-term monitoring and research consortium designed to understand the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem. A hallmark of PISCO’s approach is strong engagement with natural resource agencies and boundary organizations to ensure that this knowledge informs wise policy and management decisions about the marine environment. During this event, we will highlight projects in which PISCO’s data streams, analyses, and protocols are being used by marine resource managers in California and Oregon when designing and establishing long-term marine reserve monitoring programs and assessing effectiveness of these areas. We will also have examples of PISCO collaborations and resulting products that have been used to educate and engage communities about research currently being conducted off the coasts of California and Oregon. These collaborative research efforts include monitoring of: kelp forests and shallow subtidal rocky reefs, intertidal rocky reef biological communities, settlement of fishes, and ocean conditions (e.g., temperature, oxygen and pH). For more information, visit http://www.piscoweb.org/.
Reef Check
The Reef Check Foundation is a California non-profit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of two ecosystems: tropical coral reefs and California rocky reefs. For ten years, Reef Check California (RCCA) researchers and volunteer citizen scientist scuba divers have been surveying rocky reefs and kelp forest along the California coast. Volunteer training consists of four days of classroom and in-water sessions focused on reef ecology, species identification, and data collection procedures and citizen scientists are certified and retested every year. Data collection focuses on surveying about 80 sites both inside and outside of marine protected areas (MPA’s) to provide characterizations of reef communities and detect trends in marine life populations. Reef Check California citizen scientists count and, in many cases, size 73 species of invertebrates, fish and algae and RCCA data have been used for the baseline characterization of MPAs in all study regions and to make long-term monitoring recommendations in southern and central California. As such, this statewide monitoring program is providing annual data on the trends and status of important species inside and outside of California’s network of MPAs while involving the public in marine management and conservation. For more information, visit http://reefcheck.org/.