David López-Carr has been awarded a Faculty Initiative Grant from the Pacific Rim Research Program for his project titled “Developing sustainable fisheries management in the Pacific Rim under changing climate: sustainability, vulnerability, and adaptation.” The Pacific Rim Research Program is a multi-campus program established to encourage Pacific Rim research among the ten University of California campuses. It sponsors a competitive grants program for University of California faculty and graduate students who do research on Pacific Rim topics in a variety of disciplines.
Dr. López-Carr’s research is focused on the uncertain trajectory of climate change impacts on the Pacific Rim. This uncertainty, coupled with notable heterogeneity in the human and physical geographies of the Pacific Rim, leaves many fisheries-dependent economies highly vulnerable. Given the importance of fisheries to sustainable livelihoods across the region, the palpable potential exists for imminent economic and social crisis in the region if we cannot better understand, and act on, existing uncertainties in coupled human-natural systems across Pacific Rim fisheries.
The proposed research aims to interface climate change and ecological data with fisheries data to understand human livelihood and marine resource impacts of distinct fishery management systems under changing climate conditions in the Pacific Rim; this will be undertaken by performing comparative and integrated analyses of the effects of climate change on human livelihoods among five comparative case studies: Chile, the Peru-Chile border, Ecuador, French Polynesia, and California. This grant will also provide support for joint-doctoral student Jaime Speed Rossiter, whose research focuses on the effectiveness of various marine conservation polices in the Pacific Rim, as well as supporting Tammy Elwell‘s dissertation field work in Chile.
Dr. López-Carr and his students would like to extend their sincere gratitude to all faculty and staff who assisted with this grant. Also, Jaime would like to thank the UCSB Geography Department for providing such a great research opportunity.
