Finally, the consensus of the group is that coastal regions are highly vulnerable, in large part because of other components of human-caused change. Improving regional capabilities to understand and distinguish climate-related impacts on coastal ecosystems should be a high priority. The group recommends a broad, interdisciplinary initiative for understanding and assessing coastal vulnerability and impacts. Breakout Group Don Boesch opened the discussion, introduced the speakers and laid out the agenda. He explained that this particular breakout group was different in that it is not looking at one contiguous region.
Participants have to consider issues common to all the coastal regions.
He noted that sea level rise is not currently accelerating, but Northern mid-latitude storms are getting stronger. Thus those living on coasts in Northern midlatitudes will face more storm damage. She noted that data indicate that sea level rise is increasing in some regions. Disruption of the global nitrogen cycle is happening even faster than the disruption of the global carbon cycle. This has a whole host of implications for ecosystems, such as eutrophication of coastal ecosystems.