Candidate Presentation
Dr. Kristy Lewis, Univ. of Central Florida
“Coastal Ecosystem Convergence: Using transdisciplinary oceanography to address complex coastal challenges”
ABSTRACT: Coastal ecosystems and the communities they support are experiencing an unprecedented level of degradation from the compound impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. My lab addresses a critical need to develop tools and approaches to research and science communication that resolve the complexities of these compound stressors. In this talk, I will present the emerging paradigm of transdisciplinary oceanography and how this cutting-edge framework can provide the diversity of thought, knowledge, and data to address the challenges facing our coastal regions. Transdisciplinary oceanography, by definition, is an inclusive approach to research that aims to democratize knowledge to solve complex societal problems. In my research, I leverage this approach by using various techniques to investigate coastal food webs and ecosystem resilience, including multivariate statistical approaches, geospatial analyses, and long-term field studies. The cornerstone of my work uses ecosystem modeling to explore how synergistic disturbances impact marine food webs. The nature of ecosystem modeling requires that I act as a boundary spanner to synergize disparate data sources, across all fields of oceanography, linking the system from ocean physics and biogeochemistry to lower (e.g., zooplankton) and upper trophic levels (e.g., fishery species) to humans, which rely on these systems. I will present two case studies from my previous work, which highlight how using a transdisciplinary approach to coastal ecosystem modeling of food webs can answer important questions regarding resilience and natural resource management. Finally, I will highlight the strengths of ecosystem modeling, as well as some of the shortcomings, and provide potential solutions to these gaps in knowledge that would guide my future research at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography.