Red Latinoamericana de Acidificación del Océano (LAOCA) - Latin-American Ocean Acidification Network (LAOCA)

This December 15th, 2015, in the city of Concepcion, Chile, it was officially established the Latin-American Ocean Acidification Network (LAOCA Network). A group of 24 scientists from seven Latin-American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Chile, worked all together on a regional workshop, which was funded by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission IOC-UNESCO, the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC), the Center for the Study of Multiple-Drivers on Marine Socio-Ecological Systems (MUSELS), and the Millennium Institute of Oceanography (IMO) in Chile. During two days of hard work, the group of scientists, were devoted to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each country in relation to ocean acidification’ research. Along with this analysis it was defined the mission and goals of what would be LAOCA Network, which has among ten main objectives; (i) to synthesize the information about ocean acidification impacts in Latin-American, (ii) to encourage the implementation, maintenance, and calibration of long-term data-set of carbonate chemistry in Latin-America, (iii) training of LAOCA members in the different action lines (e.g. observation, experimentation, and modeling), (iv) to standardize chemical analytical techniques and protocols for experimentation in order to enhance data quality, (v) to establish a regional node for the articulation and communication between local, regional, and global research programs (e.g. GOA-ON and IOCCP), (vi) to determine and evaluate local and regional scenarios of Ocean Acidification for different types of marine ecosystems (e.g. estuaries, coastal area, open ocean, etc), (vii) to enhance student exchange and to facilitate access to infrastructure and equipment among institutions and LAOCA member countries, (viii) to design an outreach strategy for communicate the problematic of ocean acidification to society, (ix) to promote the development of cooperation projects between member countries of LAOCA, and (x) to promote the inclusion of the problematic of Ocean Acidification on the political agenda of member countries, and even through the pursuit of cooperation agreements among LAOCA members.

 

Broa laoca video2