Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction

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The PI's propose a Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. The mission of this Center 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 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. The rationale for this Center is that coastal margins are among the most densely populated and developed regions in the United States. 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. This proposed STC is timely in the emerging context of NSF and national initiatives on ocean-observing systems and will provide 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. 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. 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. Intellectual Merit: The STC will create a coastal margin observatory, as its primary infrastructure for research, education, and knowledge transfer. This observing system will be a 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), this system will be 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. Broader Impacts: 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.