Ocean treaty calls for good science to support good decisions to further ocean protections says @CWRU professor

Newswise — In the days and weeks following the historic United Nations treaty to protect ocean biodiversity in early March of this year, one thing has again resurfaced to become very clear: The need for clear and agreed-upon ocean science has never been more acute.

Additionally, while climate change as a major control on long-term processes is pretty much understood, abrupt variability on a millennial or centennial-scale remains unexplained –and this knowledge, too, is essential for the future sustainability and development of regions facing adverse environmental change and extreme weather menace.

Those are the expert opinions of Onema Christopher Adojoh, assistant professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

(Contact him directly at )

Adojoh is an environmentalist / geoscientist with an interdisciplinary academic research training that cuts across different continents (North America, Africa, Asia, and UK-Europe).

He uses multiple proxies, applied GIS tools, and empirical data to reconstruct past (50,0000000 years to Recent) shallow marine and lake conditions (e.g., ocean/lake level change, river discharge, ecosystem dynamics, and climate patterns) and, to study polluted water.”

Adojah contends that for scientists effectively and fairly advise policymakers on the best course to avert any dreadful impact on the society, the current extreme weather and hydroclimate impact along most of the ocean coastal settings in the world requires array of muti-proxy data to investigate past records to observe the climate and sea level conditions to predict the future pattern.

One example: Adojoh concludes that the conservation of ecosystems (coastal mangrove vegetation) should be of utmost importance to the present decision-making process affecting marine coastal systems and their ability to sustain future generations in the region.

He asserts that this becomes an important necessity because mangrove vegetation plays a key role as a signal for recognizing sea-level transgression, ability to swiftly absorb CO2, buffering strong winds, and offering coastal protection along the East Equatorial Atlantic Ocean.

For more details on Adojoh’s research,