Dr. Kimberly Yates is a Research Oceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Center for Coastal and Marine Science (SPCMSC). She specializes in regional-scale, integrated science studies that examine how changes in coastal ecosystem processes may impact or mitigate risks from coastal hazards, using a whole system perspective that considers the interactions and linkages among chemistry, biology and the physical environment.

Much of her recent work has focused on coastal and ocean acidification impacts in estuaries and on coral reefs; how seafloor erosion in coastal carbonate ecosystems changes risks from sea level rise, waves and storms; and identifying and characterizing coastal climate change refuges. She currently leads the Tampa Bay Ocean Acidification Monitoring Program in collaboration with the Tampa Bay Estuary Program and University of South Florida and has established the first real-time ocean acidification monitoring systems in Tampa Bay and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Yates has been a member of the U.S. Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification (IWG- OA) of the National Science and Technology Subcommittee since 2009 and served as Co-Chair of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program — Ocean Acidification Subcommittee from 2011 to 2016. From 2015 to present, she has served as a founding Executive Committee Member, Steering Committee Member and recently completed her term as Co-Chair of the Science Working Group for the Southeast Ocean and Coastal Acidification Network. She became a Steering Committee Member of the GCOOS Gulf of Mexico Coastal Acidification Network (GCAN) in 2016.

As the current Chair of GCAN’s Steering Committee, she has worked to expand the GCAN stakeholder network by engaging end-users directly in development of research and monitoring plans, and has facilitated partnerships across the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Region acidification networks to work toward better understanding linkages between environmental health in the Gulf of Mexico and along the U.S. Southeast Coast. Yates completed her Ph.D. in Geology with specialization in Biogeochemistry (1996) and her undergraduate degree in Geology and the Honors Program at the University of South Florida (1992).