Regional Modeling as a Tool to Support Community Dialogue

Early Lessons from a Workshop Series in the Salish Sea Basin

Alicia Karspeck, Abigale Wyatt, & Fiona Griffin

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Over the past year, [C]Worthy scientists co-designed and produced a series of workshops in the Salish Sea exploring how community members think about marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) in the context of their local coastal environment. The engagement process was conducted as social-science research led by Dr. Sara Nawaz from American University's Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal. Workshop participants included staff from tribes in the region, nonprofit practitioners, state and municipal managers, and professionals from relevant industries like shellfish farming. These are people deeply invested in coastal and ocean issues, generally with little familiarity with mCDR.

The workshops integrated the results of regionally-tailored ocean biogeochemical models (C-Star ROMS-MARBL) with socio-political scenarios to support participants in considering if, and how, mCDR might be done in their local waters. 

Bringing regionally-relevant modeling into the conversation

Our workshops featured a novel way to bring coastal communities into this topic: we developed a set of plausible deployment scenarios for mCDR in the Salish Sea. We showed participants visualizations of the potential impacts of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) and direct ocean capture (DOC) on alkalinity, pH, and enhanced carbon storage within the Salish Sea. 

The scenarios focused on three scales of deployment for the future: (1) small, research-scale pilots (CO₂ removal target: 200 tonnes); (2) commercial demonstration deployments (35,000 tonnes); and (3) large-scale regional deployments (155,000 tonnes). These scenarios were simulated using the C-Star ocean modeling framework, and results were shared directly with participants to support consideration of local trialing and deployment of carbon dioxide removal. 

This movie shows one week of a large-scale ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) deployment simulation. Alkalinity is introduced at wastewater treatment plants (yellow Xs) and hypothetical OAE-specific facilities (red triangles). The colors indicate the change in surface ocean alkalinity concentration (mmol/m³) resulting from the OAE intervention. For example, the magenta plumes in the northern Salish Sea oscillate with the tides as they extend southward toward the San Juan Islands.

We used these dynamic visuals to help participants understand how the tides, currents, and weather systems in their local waters can lead to complex variations in the seawater chemistry and CO₂ uptake from the atmosphere. These visuals supported the participants in moving beyond purely conceptual discussions of mCDR risks and potential to more place-based discussions of how mCDR might intersect with local values and experiences.

While the team from American University will be publishing a formal analysis of the deliberative process we used and our research findings, we would like to share some of our own early reflections from this work. 

What we heard

An important reason to co-host the workshops, from our perspective, was to learn how to better communicate highly technical information, to help folks understand what models can and cannot reveal, and to experience first-hand how model-based information interacts with community values, hopes, concerns, and questions. 

Overall, participants were deeply engaged as we presented the results of our modeling studies. We observed a practical and straightforward desire to understand how models could be used to address regional concerns and where they might be lacking. Even though participants were coming to the table with varying levels of technical familiarity with modeling approaches, they worked hard to digest, interpret and make sense of the information provided. These are some of the themes that arose: 

Modeling tools both provided reassurance and sparked concerns:

We observed that offering modeling information provided some community members a level of reassurance that mCDR interventions are unlikely to be pursued blindly or without the use of science-based tools for planning. At the same time, concerns about model fidelity were sparked—participants wanted to know how much they could trust this information, and worried about aspects of importance that weren’t included in the models (like ecological dimensions), and whether those would or would not be considered in future decision-making.

Understanding how mCDR could impact their coastal ecosystems: 

Our simulations focus on carbonate chemistry and carbon flux, but there was strong demand to see biological and food web responses modeled as well. A gap remained in terms of how local mCDR deployments would affect marine species as well as overall ocean “health”.

Making sense of the region’s mCDR potential relative to the global context:

As we explained to participants, only a small fraction of state and regional carbon dioxide removal targets could be met by doing mCDR in the Salish Sea. This is due to constraints imposed on elevating local pH (as inferred from existing wastewater permitting regimes, i.e.,  Washington’s administrative code, British Columbia’s approved water quality guidelines) and scaling stand-alone coastal commercial deployments, even with the largest deployment scenarios. Some participants wondered about the decisions to scale up in the region if the overall potential contribution is so low, and broader discussion arose around the larger global efforts and coordination that would need to occur to see mCDR contribute meaningfully to climate change. 

Discussing models can highlight specific place-based insights of relevance to key aspects of technical decision-making and planning: 

For example, participants highlighted how future glacier melt funnels into the Fraser River and questioned how this changing freshwater input might alter the long-term effectiveness and impacts of ocean-based CDR.

Balancing information sharing without “blinding” participants with science:

We heard a number of reflections from participants about the way that physics-based modeling and data-rich visuals are both very useful in helping them think through mCDR—but that they also may create a sense of an “expertise” hierarchy that may discourage some from offering their local perspectives. 

These workshops have helped us reflect on how to make modeling more valuable as a tool for supporting rich, place-based conversations that enhance learning, participation, and potentially positive outcomes for a community.

What happens next

The team at American University is compiling workshop transcripts for a forthcoming publication analyzing the discussion. The team is also planning follow-up workshops later this year to share what we heard back to participants.

This iterative loop of community engagement informing modeling priorities, and modeling improvements feeding back into public dialogue, is exactly what we hoped these workshops would catalyze.

This workshop series was generously funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.