Symposium To Give Residents An Inside Look At Impacts Of Climate Change In Woods Hole
ResilientWoodsHole is hosting a free public symposium on the impacts of climate change in the village on Thursday, November 18, which is intended to give attendees an inside look at the climate science at work just down the road.
ResilientWoodsHole is a public-private partnership spearheaded by three organizations in Woods Hole: the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Biological Laboratory, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northeast Fisheries Science Center. The upcoming symposium is the second in a multi-phased series and will build upon previous assessments of potential impacts of sea-level rise and coastal storms that were introduced during the September 2020 event “Rising Tides: Phase I.”
“In 2019, WHOI, MBL, and NOAA recognized that we had like-challenges on the forefront related to climate change, impacts of sea-level rise, increasing frequency and intensity of storms, and our need to be able to be on the water to function in our respective missions at our organizations,” said Leslie-Ann McGee, project manager of ResilientWoodsHole and assistant director of the Consortium For Marine Robotics at WHOI. “The Phase One symposium was really focused on the results of a study we had done to look at our own institutions and our own assets, and also to share our knowledge of the threats to the village.”
The study was self-funded by the three organizations and conducted by the organization’s analytical partner, the Woods Hole Group, an environmental consulting group based in the village. The initial study focused mainly on the assets of organizations but also on the coastal community in which they’re embedded and how that too stands to be affected by climate change. Phase Two is intended to dive even deeper into the problem and start the planning process.
“We really want to look at other things that we depend on, like Water Street, like the business on Water Street, like the residences in the village where a lot of our employees work or live, and make sure that they, too, were protected,” Ms. McGee said. “We’re all so dependent on this infrastructure and we want to make sure that we’re investing and understanding the impacts more clearly. That’s really the key for us. We wanted to make sure that we were moving quickly from phase one, beyond just admiring the problem into understanding the problem in much greater detail.”
Thursday's symposium will feature three scientists, one from each organization, who will talk about the climate work they are doing. Ms. McGee said that they are also bringing in local government organizations, including the conservation committee and Falmouth’s wastewater department, so residents have an understanding of what’s being done at the local level to support climate resiliency and planning. The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management will also be there to demonstrate what is being done in these fields at the state level as well.
“We think that’s really important, [that] people know that there are people doing things, there are people thinking about this,” Ms. McGee said. “We want to not necessarily ease folks’ anxiety, but we know that climate change and climate impact, especially in a coastal community, can really breed anxiety and uncertainty about the future. So we want people to understand that there are people studying it, there are people working on planning for it, and we want to show them how they can get engaged in that process.”
ResilientWoodsHole is also working to bring representatives onto the project from the business community and each of the neighborhoods of Woods Hole. These representatives will work together throughout the next year or so on a steering committee, tasked with determining what types of climate adaptive planning would best fit the varied needs of the village.
By being inclusive of all people and places and things in Woods Hole, ResilientWoodsHole is setting the stage for a productive, collaborative conversation on how to handle the impacts of climate change in a small coastal village as a united front. This second symposium is the next step in furthering that conversation.
“We want to make sure [that] as much as we are getting from the community, we’re giving back to the community [by] sharing what our knowledge is,” Ms. McGee said. “Of course, it won’t be a hugely in-depth discussion of our knowledge, but it gives them a survey of the types of work that we’re all doing in our organizations on understanding climate resiliency. We’re really excited about that.”
Even though the sun has barely set on Phase Two, the work at ResilientWoodsHole continues as they officially kicked off Phase Three of the project just last month, which includes the steering committee of community representatives and a larger scale planning effort.
“Phase Three, which we’ll be talking about a little bit at our symposium too, is really the community project,” Ms. McGee said. “Phase Three is funded by a coastal resiliency grant from [the] Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, and this project will look at how do we develop adaptive strategies in the village so that we can continue to live here, work here, recreate here, and the village can thrive despite our impacts from climate change.”
Ms. McGee emphasized how important collaboration — at both the community, town, and state level — is to this project because, at the end of the day, climate change impacts are something felt by everyone at every level. In an effort to further engage the community, ResilientWoodsHole has launched a collaborative website to foster education on and engagement with the issues at hand.
“While we may be the shepherds of it, we don’t own it,” Ms. McGee said of the project. “It’s everybody’s. We want to make sure our efforts are all collaborative because we could do things that are not collaborative, but they don’t benefit the larger community, and we love Woods Hole. All three of our institutions plan on staying here for a very long time, and we thrive on our community members and our businesses and we want to make sure we can all grow together and stay functioning and contributing for a long time.”
In an effort to be as accessible as possible, the ResilientWoodsHole symposium will be available to both in-person and virtual guests, for those who prefer to attend online. Ms. McGee said she hopes that the virtual option will encourage seasonal residents who aren’t currently local to tune in as well.
“It’s really a continuum of work, and it’s going to be iterative work that we hope our community will engage heavily in with us,” she said. “We’re really looking forward to doing something about it, instead of just sort of noodling on the problem. We don’t always come away with the most perfect solution, but if we wait for the perfect solution, we’ll never actually deal with the threats that are sitting on our doorstep right now.”
The November 18 symposium will begin at 6:30 PM in the Clapp Auditorium of the Marine Biological Laboratory and is free to the public.