Climate vulnerability research is enhanced by stakeholder engagement as coastal communities are increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven impacts, yet these impacts are rarely evenly distributed across space and stakeholder feedback is not always well incorporated into the process. While often used in applied management applications, integrated spatially explicit assessments of multi-faceted vulnerability and hazard less commonly appear in the scientific literature, especially those that are transferable across geographies and risk metrics. Since many geographies lack an integrated, stakeholder-driven assessment of multiple hazards and vulnerabilities within the same assessment, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science developed a transferable and integrated community vulnerability assessment framework (Framework) that relies primarily upon available secondary data and is supplemented with stakeholder-derived primary data. Using blended approaches in stakeholder engagement, we present the Framework’s six methodological steps as recently applied in Los Angeles County, California: iterative partner engagement, indicator and index development, vulnerability assessment, hazard assessment, risk assessment, and reengagement for adaptation action. We conclude that boundary-spanning organizations such as Sea Grant Extension programs can play a crucial role in participatory science and stakeholder needs assessments, and emphasize the need for continued stakeholder engagement in climate science.

Sea level rise (SLR) will exert pressures on assets with social value, including things such as infrastructure and habitats, in the coastal zone. Assessing and ranking the vulnerability of those assets can provide insights that support planning and projects that can reduce those vulnerabilities. In this study, we develop a quantitative, data-drive framework for calculating a sea level rise vulnerability score, using publicly available spatial data, for 111,239 parcels in Puget Sound, Washington State, USA. Notably, our approach incorporates an assessment of coastal erosion, as well as coastal flooding, in an evaluation of the exposure of each parcel, and impacts to habitats are quantified alongside impacts to existing infrastructure. The results suggest that sea level rise vulnerability in Puget Sound is widely distributed, but the overall distribution of scores is heavily skewed, suggesting that adaptation actions directed at a relatively small number of parcels could yield significant reductions in vulnerability. The results are also coupled with a concurrently developed social vulnerability index, which provides additional insight regarding those people and places that may be predisposed to adverse impacts from SLR-related hazards. We find that the proposed approach offers advantages in terms of advancing equitable SLR-related risk reduction, but also that the results should be carefully interpreted considering embedded assumptions and data limitations.

Despite being among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth, coral reefs face ongoing threats that could negatively impact the human populations who depend on them. The National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) collects and monitors data on various aspects of U.S. coral reefs to provide a holistic understanding of the status of the reefs and adjacent human communities. This paper explores results from the NCRMP’s first socioeconomic monitoring cycle using an ecosystem services framework and examines how these results can be used to improve coral reef management in the following U.S. coral reef jurisdictions: American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Florida, Guam, Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Results suggest that residents in the U.S. Pacific coral reef basin may hold stronger cultural and provisioning values, whereas residents in the U.S. Atlantic coral reef basin may hold stronger regulating values. These findings suggest that outreach efforts have been successful in communicating benefits provided by coral reef ecosystems to the public. They also provide insight into which ecosystem services are valued in each jurisdiction, allowing resource managers to make science-based decisions about how to communicate conservation and management initiatives.