This Resilience Roundtable event was held on the October 25th, 2019 at the beautiful Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS) campus overlooking the York River in Gloucester, VA. The objective of this workshop was to focus on two thematic areas identified in previous roundtables as important for the Commonwealth's coastal resilience: Changing Ecosystems & Rural Resilience. This new approach to "rotate" different topics allows for more in-depth discussions about the specific priority research questions among researchers working on related issues and in collaboration with local stakeholders to increase their policy relevance.

The event started with a panel discussion, featuring Ben Watson (James River Association), Shep Moon (Virginia Coastal Zone Management), Lauren Fox (Pamunkey Tribe), and Lewis Lawrence (Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission). The ensuing discussions were focused on exploring the selected topics though the conceptual lens of coupled natural and human systems to explore the relationships and dependencies between different social and environmental issues in the coastal zone.

Changing Ecosystems

Anthropogenically-driven trends, such as poor water quality, fish stock depletion, loss of wetlands, and pollution interact with climate-driven ecological changes, putting additional pressures on both natural and human systems. Leading research questions identified at the first two Roundtables meetings that guided discussion about changing ecosystems and coastal resilience are:

• How are natural processes that affect coastal habitats changing and what are the impacts of that change on both the resources and the ecosystem services it provides to adjacent communities?
• Which aspects of climate-change driven changes to ecological systems can we model and reasonably project into the future?
• What kind of data about ecological processes needs to be gathered and what innovative approaches can be used to support this?

Rural Resilience

Coastal resilience significantly differs between urban and rural areas, with rural areas also facing a number of additional challenges that affect their ability to adapt, such as a lack of resources, access to educational opportunities, and reliance on ecosystem services. On the other hand, a rural population is often more self-sufficient and self-reliant to deal with challenges and efficiently use existing resources to address problems related to external stressors. However, this advantage may be challenged by coexistence of other pressures such as outmigration of younger population, aging of those who stay behind, fewer economic opportunities, and environmental problems. The research questions identified at the first two Roundtables meetings that guided focused discussions:

• What are the specific physical, socioeconomic, psychological, and cultural vulnerabilities of the rural population in coastal Virginia?
• What data and research are needed to answer pressing questions related to coastal rural resilience that will generate policy-relevant outcomes?
• How do rural residents cope with accelerated flooding and use local knowledge to deal with climate and environmental change in coastal Virginia?