Moonset over Seabright Beach
Santa Cruz is home to some of the most advanced marine & climate sciences research in the world. UCSC, NOAA/NEMS, PISCO, JIMO, Long Marine Lab, and the Paleoclimate & Climate Change Research Group all operate out of Santa Cruz. They investigate complex interactions between all the sea creatures and their environment — and they collaborate with institutions across the world to share data, link computational models, and review research to determine the impacts of climate change from the smallest to the largest scale.
These institutions rely on massive computational power to crunch data and run simulations. Unfortunately, they exert tremendous stress on local bandwidth. It’s a big problem. But now, small regional models of environmental systems are being connected across the globe to form large-scale meta-models that can more accurately approximate complex Earth systems. Clearly, connecting such powerful models will require far more bandwidth than is presently available.
In order for Santa Cruz research organizations to grow regional climate models, make them interoperable with other models, and connect them to the emerging global meta-models, it will be critical to build out local bandwidth capacity. Likewise, regional collaboration between Santa Cruz institutions and the larger ecology of San Francisco Bay Area research, clean energy, biotech, and green technology will be greatly enhanced by a local fiber ring.
Perhaps most importantly, greater bandwidth could bring change to the 25,000 regular commuters who burn fossil fuels to drive from Santa Cruz to the Bay Area every day for work. Greater bandwidth will enable more of them to stay in town and telecommute from home and from co-working spaces like NextSpace and The Satellite.
For Santa Cruz, a gigabit bandwidth is really a major planet-saving opportunity.
Santa Cruz contributes a tremendous amount of highly-valuable research to the global community. Not only is it at the forefront of climate & marine science, but UCSC Physical & Biological Sciences holds the distinction of being the highest nationally ranking institution for impact of research in space sciences (NASA, 2008) and the 2nd highest world impact of research in physical science. The ability to grow our research, broaden collaborations, and build interoperability across regional and global research institutions will ensure that Santa Cruz continues to play an exceptional role in helping us confront the greatest environmental challenges of our times.
Chris Arkenberg is a technologist, forecaster, and strategist. He currently sits on the advisory board for 
