Along with my normal blog post, I would like to re-post an article I was featured in for Oregon Sea Grant’s Confluence newsletter. I think the article gives a great overall perspective on my research and how it applies to coastal communities:

How will climate change impact estuaries?

Small estuaries, like those prevalent in the Pacific Northwest, are strongly coupled to their watersheds, and thus signs of climate change will show up visibly in these ecosystems. What this change will look like, and how it will affect our coastal communities and ecosystems, is the foundation of my research.
The first question that should be asked in a research project, especially one viewed through the lens of Oregon Sea Grant’s mission of connecting research and stakeholders, is simply, “Why does this matter?” For me, the answer is that our coasts will change in response to climate change, and if we can find ways to more accurately predict what those changes might be, we’ll have a better chance of being prepared. Experience has shown me that it’s difficult to gain traction with stakeholders over the problem of climate change because of its nebulous nature. My research attempts to replace this “looming shadow” of a threat with something actionable that can be integrated directly into community planning. In this way, I believe my research and Oregon Sea Grant’s base ethic of public service are aligned, as my work is specifically designed to create usable products for Pacific Northwest communities.
My research uses numerical modeling to examine estuaries in Tillamook and Coos Bays as they change through time, driven by the predicted future climate. The current state of the practice for this type of study is the “bathtub model,” in which one simply raises the water level by the predicted amount of sea-level rise. However, this model ignores other effects of climate change such as precipitation, wind, and wave action, resulting in oversimplified data. My procedure greatly expands this paradigm through something called a continual hydrodynamic model run, which captures all the ways in which climate change might affect an estuary.
My advisor, professor David Hill in Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, and I have attended several stakeholder meetings regarding coastal hazards and local community planning, to present our research and to get feedback as to what products might be most useful. We intend to continue to be a presence at such meetings and to provide a scientific resource to communities interested in learning how climate change might affect them. While we have not “solved” the question of climate change’s effect on small estuaries, we are trying to answer the question, and I hope my research will eventually provide a universally usable tool to help coastal communities and ecosystems build resilience to climate change.
Kai Parker is a doctoral candidate in coastal and ocean engineering in OSU’s College of Engineering. He is a 2015–16 Robert E. Malouf Fellow funded by Oregon Sea Grant.

For the full article check out the following link:

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/confluence-springsummer-2016