Center Name: NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction
Director and Lead Institution: António M. Baptista, Oregon Health & Science University
Introduction: Partner institutions–Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Oregon State University (OSU), and University of Washington (UW)–propose a NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. Its mission is to study coastal margins using integrated observation and prediction technologies as critical infrastructure for research, education, and knowledge transfer. The STC will advance the understanding of coastal margins in general and of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) coastal margin in particular by creating the scientific infrastructure necessary to obtain reliable quantitative descriptions and analyses of integrated physical, chemical, and biological variables in estuaries, freshwater plumes, and continental shelves.
Rationale: Coastal margins are among the most densely populated and developed regions in the United States (US). As interface systems between rivers and oceans, coastal margins sustain highly productive ecosystems and resources, are sensitive to many scales of variability, and play a key role in global elemental cycles. There is a critical need for better understanding of coastal margins and the stresses placed on them by natural events and human activities.
The proposed STC is exceptionally timely, and its potential, outstanding. In the emerging context of NSF and national initiatives on ocean-observing systems, the leadership, long-term commitment, and intellectual critical mass of a STC is necessary to enable researchers to focus effectively on transformative technological and scientific opportunities to solve major science questions on coastal margins. Science as usual will not suffice: sustained advances across disciplines, technologies, environments, and scales are required to an extent unprecedented even in interdisciplinary oceanography.
The partners: OHSU, the lead institution, maintains one of the most advanced and longest-standing coastal margin observatories in the world. In the past decade, OHSU has developed broadly recognized expertise in environmental information systems, molecular-level science, and computer science and engineering–all areas that will critically influence next-generation oceanography. Two OSU academic units–College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences and College of Science–provide established expertise in physical, chemical, and biological oceanography and marine resources, and have unique observational and modeling assets deployed along PNW shores and shelf. Through the Applied Physics Laboratory, UW contributes essential capabilities in ocean engineering, including an established track record in sensor and platform development. Complementary expertise is provided by researchers at UW College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, U. of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, U. of Utah, and U. of Wisconsin. Many other academic collaborators will be engaged through targeted initiatives. All partners have strong educational programs; Saturday Academy and The SMILE Program at OSU operate excellent programs in pre-college education. A core of industry partners will represent a spectrum of critical technologies, spanning computing, visualization, ocean sensors, molecular sensors, and ocean robotics.
Project description
Research: The STC research will be driven by grand challenges in coastal margin understanding: How do climate and climate change impact coastal margins? What roles do coastal margins play in global elemental cycles? How far seaward do human activities impact ecosystems? Research will be organized into 3 overlapping themes: I. Coastal Margin Observatories, where the STC will generate crucially needed, long-term physical, chemical, and biological information through tightly integrated observations and predictions; II. Coastal Margin Science, where environmental information products will be used to gain novel understanding of ecosystem variability and connectivity, through the exploration of 4 hypotheses addressing the variability of microbial communities, biological productivity, and carbon fluxes with climate and water use; and III. Enabling Technologies, where technological challenges to long-term observations and simulations will be overcome by developing, evaluating, and enhancing enabling technologies in: (a) modeling and simulation; (b) sensors and platforms, and (c) information and visualization. A combination of long-term core projects and annually funded seed, augmentation, and integrative projects will allow the STC to maintain a balance between continuity and flexibility of research efforts.
Education and Diversity: To prepare students–including females and underrepresented minorities–for careers in science, industry, and management, the STC will offer multiple educational opportunities. The objective is to foster a long-term educational pipeline by developing in K-12 students a lifelong interest in science and technology, by creating opportunities for college students to integrate research and industry experiences in their studies, and by preparing graduate students for leadership in their careers.
Knowledge Transfer: The STC will engage a spectrum of stakeholders in a multi-directional exchange of information. In particular, the STC will: (a) be an intellectual magnet and a resource for the ocean-sciences community and for such disciplines as information sciences and molecular biology–to help shape next-generation oceanography; (b) enable industries to work with researchers and educators, as opposed to just serving as vendors and contractors; and (c) lend expertise and scientific information to regional and federal agencies for management of PNW coastal margin resources.
Management: Central to the STC vision is an intellectually vibrant, diverse environment conducive to collaboration, innovation, and productivity across 45 geographically dispersed scientists and educators, large numbers of students, and industry groups. Creating, sustaining, and ensuring the productivity of the STC will be the primary responsibility of the STC management team: a Director (Baptista, OHSU), 2 Co-Directors (Barth, OSU; and Martin, UW), an Executive Director, and an Education Director (both to be recruited). The management team will be advised and assisted by 3 advisory panels: an External Advisory Board to ensure that the STC vision remains bold and that commitments to NSF and other stakeholders are met; an Institutional Leadership Council to monitor STC progress relative to OHSU, OSU, and UW priorities; and a Partnership Council to facilitate maximum impact across multiple stakeholder communities.
What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? The STC will create SATURN, a coastal margin observatory, as its primary infrastructure for research, education, and knowledge transfer. SATURN is an ambitious configurable integration of heterogeneous modeling systems and observation networks, designed to remove a fundamental barrier to coastal margin science: the lack of long-term descriptions and analyses of physical, chemical, and biological parameters. While other ocean-sciences observatories exist or are planned (e.g., LEO-15, VENUS, MARS), SATURN is unique in its integration of river-to-ocean environments and in the multiplicity and level of coordination of its components and enabling technologies, including new approaches to sensing. The proposed science addresses challenging hypotheses and relates regional ecosystem variability to climate and water use in PNW coastal margins. The expectation of transformative understanding is high due to improved capabilities of observation and prediction, and due to the proposed mechanistic, molecular-level approaches to understand the structure, activity and response to environmental stress of microbial communities.
What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? No NSF STC focuses on the ocean or its coastal margins–a significant gap from the viewpoint of both society and the scientific community. Coastal margins have enormous economic and social importance, they are highly vulnerable to change, and their complexity makes a balanced management of marine resources and societal needs difficult: (a) Economic and social importance: Coastal areas comprise less than 20% of the contiguous US, but support more than 50% of the US population. Over a trillion dollars of coastal infrastructure are deployed in the US alone every year; (b) Vulnerability: Natural and man-made hazards in coastal areas cost the US more than $2 billion annually. In addition, reduction of wild salmon diversity in the PNW is a dramatic example of ecosystem vulnerabilities that can only be defused by anticipating impacts decades before their manifestation; and (c) Complexity: The complexity of coastal margins presents enormous challenges for the sustainable management of one of the most productive environments available to humans–challenges that the proposed STC will help society meet.
