Coastal Ecosystem Modeling in the Context of Climate Change

One of the central challenges for the coastal and marine science community is to project how the biological and physical conditions of the world’s oceans and estuaries will be altered by climate change. Numerical simulation models play important roles in assessing the potential effects of climate change on coastal ecosystems and developing management strategies aimed at minimizing risks to sensitive habitats, species and people living along the coasts. Numerical models also provide a quantitative framework to disentangle the synergistic influences of multiple factors and isolate the effects of individual stressors. Here, we provide a brief overview of numerical simulation models used to assess the potential effects of climate change on coastal ecosystems. We then highlight three selected case studies where models have been used to project climate change impacts in two large coastal ecosystems, the northern Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of challenges for the use of models to address climate change, highlighting the need for observations, models that better represent the complex and flexible biological communities in the marine environment, and a need to better represent feedbacks in ecosystem models.