Overview:

The ocean is Earth’s last frontier. It comprises most of its habitable volume, is home to a unique and extraordinary diversity of organisms; regulates its climate; and provides food and livelihood for billions of people. Our future is inextricably linked to the ocean, and to maintaining the flow of critical and irreplaceable services healthy oceans provide. While much investigation and discussion is focused on impacts, there is a critical need and opportunity to develop solutions based in oceans at scales ranging from local communities to global action. I will present and discuss challenges and potential solutions in coastal socio-ecological systems and aquatic food systems

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Bio

Fiorenza Micheli is the David and Lucile Packard Professor of Marine Science at Stanford University,  chair of the Oceans Department in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, co-director of Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions, and senior fellow at Woods Institute for the Environment. Her research focuses on the processes shaping marine communities and coastal social-ecological systems, incorporating this understanding in marine conservation and in co-designing solutions with decision-makers and communities. She investigates climatic impacts on marine ecosystems, particularly the impacts of and adaptation to warming, hypoxia and ocean acidification in marine species, communities and fisheries, marine predators’ ecology and trophic cascades, the dynamics and sustainability of small-scale fisheries, and the design and function of Marine Protected Areas. Her research takes place in California, Mexico, the Mediterranean Sea, Palau, The Pacific Line Islands, the Caribbean and the Chagos Archipelago.