REU Site: Integrated Studies in a Rapidly Warming Fishery Ecosystem

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The Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI),located in Portland, ME, will host a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program that will bring six undergraduates to the GMRI campus each summer for three years to complete a 10-week research experience. GRMI will provide undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds with an interdisciplinary research experience in the Gulf of Maine, a coupled natural and human (CNH) system warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. The primary objective of the GMRI program is to train the next generation of scientists capable of describing, quantifying and communicating the interconnections between environmental and human influences on marine ecosystems. Applications are encouraged from students attending colleges with limited research opportunities, such as two-year and four-year primarily undergraduate institutions, veterans, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.REU students at GMRI explore the structure and function of the Gulf of Maine fishery ecosystem (plankton to seafood), how it is changing over time (trends and prediction), how it responds to perturbations (e.g., climate and fishing), and how changes may affect local communities and economies. They develop independent, hypothesis-driven research projects and are exposed to multiple scientific approaches, including classic experimental ecology, observational science, and statistical and dynamical modeling. Students also receive safety training, ethics training, and data management, analysis and scientific communications workshops. These, along with social activities, a journal club, regular seminars and a student symposium to share results are designed to foster a sense of shared experiences, critical to the success of the program. Student research will contribute to an ecosystem approach to marine resource management in a rapidly changing environment, lessons from which can be applied to other coupled systems around the world.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.