Communicating science: indicators, monitoring and collaboration in British Columbia.

• Main Authors: Day, Andrew, Bodtker, Karin
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Western CEDAR 2017
• Subjects: Fresh Water Studies; Life Sciences; Marine Biology; Natural Resources and Conservation; First Nations
• Online Access: https://cedar.wwu.edu/ssec/2016ssec/policy_and_management/26

Indicators and monitoring can be an effective way of understanding status, trends, and pressures for marine ecosystems. They can also be useful for communicating science to decision-makers, stakeholders, and the public. One of the main challenges in developing and implementing indicators is that monitoring programs can be expensive to implement over large areas like British Columbia. Further challenges include linking indicators to the diverse values that different groups hold for marine ecosystems, and working across organizational, cultural, and other boundaries. Our discussion will focus on our work building a collaborative Coastal Ocean Health Report in British Columbia. The COHR initiative involves working with First Nations, governments, citizen scientists, universities, NGOs, and others.