CoPe RCN: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research to Build Resilient Communities and Infrastructure in the Nation's Estuaries and Bays

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U.S. coasts feature a number of bays and estuaries within which many metropolitan cities are located: Washington, D.C. near Chesapeake Bay, New York City on the Hudson River, Boston on Massachusetts Bay, and San Francisco on San Francisco Bay, just to name a few. The impacts of storms and sea level rise on estuaries and bays are just beginning to be understood, and many questions remain unanswered. The semi-enclosed nature of bays also brings a unique set of challenges and opportunities for developing engineering or nature-based solutions to protect coastal infrastructure and communities. Natural habitats, such as salt marshes, oyster reefs, and sand dunes, offer coastal protection with ecosystem benefits, but the effectiveness and environmental impacts of these structures are not well understood. A shared network of waterways connects the diverse population of a basin, from urban centers to rural communities, presenting new challenges linking socio-economic disparities and environmental factors. This CoPe RCN will synthesize insights from existing coastal resiliency projects around the country and propose bold new strategies that integrate ecosystem enhancement and recovery to protect coastal communities and infrastructure. It will provide interdisciplinary training to young scientists through workshops and focus-group interactions. The RCN will have strong outreach activities through engagement with stakeholders in federal, state, and local governments; not-for-profit organizations; and coastal communities. The goal is to translate research results into specific recommendations for developing coastal resiliency solutions and seek stakeholders' feedback to orient academic research towards addressing pressing concerns faced by urban and rural communities living around the Nation's estuaries and bays.The Estuarine CoPe RCN will bring together oceanographers, engineers, ecologists, and social scientists to discuss major open questions in the interdisciplinary science of coastal resiliency. The RCN will synthesize recent advances in estuarine resiliency research and involve researchers working on several bays and estuaries: Chesapeake Bay, Hudson River and New York Harbor, Massachusetts Bay and San Francisco Bay. Comparative studies between these systems will be conducted, including analysis and modeling of sea level rise, coastline retreat and ecosystem change, risk analysis, dynamic barriers, engineered and nature-based mitigation structures, and the social science of coastal communities' responses to risks. Three in-person workshops are planned and each workshop will be followed by one-day stakeholder meetings at which investigators will engage with stakeholder communities. Regular virtual meetings through video-conferencing will be scheduled for focus group discussions. A steering committee, consisting of researchers from multiple institutions, will guide the RCN activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.