NSF : awards $13 million in third set of coastal sustainability grants .- Premios de $ 13 millones para el tercer juego de becas de sostenibilidad costeras................

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In the face of sea-level rise and other threats, awards will lead to better management of coastal environments

A new NSF Coastal SEES award addresses sustainability of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta.
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September 21, 2016

At a time when sea-level rise is flooding cities in the U.S. Southeast, harmful algae blooms are threatening seashore communities, and climate change is affecting fisheries just offshore, how do we coexist with our coastlines?

To answer that question, the National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Coastal SEES (Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability) program, has funded a third set of awards totaling $13 million to study coasts in the U.S. and around the world.

The program is largely supported by the Division of Ocean Sciences in NSF's Directorate for Geosciences. It funds research on the sustainability of coastal systems, the swaths of land closely connected to the seas -- including barrier islands, wetlands, mudflats, beaches and estuaries, as well as coastal cities, towns, recreational areas, maritime facilities -- as well as the continental seas and shelves and the atmosphere.

"Coastal systems are crucial to regional and national economies, and to human safety and sustainability," says Rick Murray, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences. "This third set of Coastal SEES awards will help us preserve our coasts at a time when they're under pressure from all sides, including sea-level rise, changes in storm intensity and frequency, ocean acidification, and development of coastal lands."

We've left a large footprint in coastal sands. In the year 2000, more than half the world's human population lived in coastal areas. By 2025, that number is expected to rise to 75 percent. By 2020, if current population trends continue, the crowded U.S. coast is projected to see its population grow from 123 million people to nearly 134 million.

NSF's new Coastal SEES projects address topics such as: apex predators, ecosystems and community sustainability in Alaska; climate change, management decisions and ecological functions in Chesapeake Bay; climate change effects on fisheries in the California Current ecosystem; new modeling tools to predict ocean acidification effects on coastal ecosystems; and landscape dynamics, mass balance and network connectivity for a sustainable Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta.

2016 NSF Coastal SEES Awards

Mya Breitbart, University of South Florida; Maryann Cairns, Northeastern University:

Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Integration of human behavior and perception into a risk-based microbial water quality management approach

John Campbell, University of California, Merced; Joseph Berry, Carnegie Institutution for Science; Roger Samelson, Oregon State University; Nicole Ardoin, Stanford University; Ulrike Seibt, University of California Los Angeles:

Coastal SEES: Coastal fog-mediated interactions between climate change, upwelling, and coast redwood resilience: Projecting vulnerabilities and the human response

Ginny Eckert, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Heidi Pearson, University of Alaska SE Juneau; Stephen Langdon, University of Alaska Anchorage:

Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Apex predators, ecosystems and community sustainability (APECS) in coastal Alaska

Jerome Fiechter, University of California, Santa Cruz:

Coastal SEES: developing new modeling tools to predict ocean acidification impacts on coastal ecosystems

Steven Goodbred, Vanderbilt University; Irina Overeem, University of Colorado Boulder; Carol Wilson, Louisiana State University; Paola Passalacqua, University of Texas Austin:

Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Multi-scale modeling and observations of landscape dynamics, mass balance, and network connectivity for a sustainable Ganges-Brahmaputra delta

Carl Hershner, College of William & Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science; Randolph Chambers College of William & Mary; Shana Jones, University of Georgia; Michelle Covi, Old Dominion University:

Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Sustainability in Chesapeake Bay shorescapes: climate change, management decisions, and ecological functions

Arthur Miller, University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Arielle Levine, San Diego State University; Junjie Zhang, University of California San Diego:

Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Climate change impacts on the sustainability of key fisheries of the California Current System

Allison Steiner, University of Michigan; Frank Lupi, Michigan State University; Daniel Obenour, North Carolina State University; Christine Kirchhoff, University of Connecticut:

Coastal SEES: Enhancing sustainability in coastal communities threatened by harmful algal blooms by advancing and integrating environmental and socio-economic modeling

-NSF-

Media Contacts Cheryl Dybas, NSF, (703) 292-7734, cdybas@nsf.gov

Related WebsitesNSF News: NSF awards first coastal sustainability grants for research on world's most populated areas:
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129266
NSF News: NSF awards $15 million in second set of coastal sustainability grants: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=132637

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, its budget is $7.5 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 48,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

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NSF Ocean Sciences Division Director Rick Murray talks about co-existing with our coastlines.
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Pteropods are shelled animals that live in the sea; they're affected by ocean acidification.
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Oyster in Chesapeake Bay. Climate change/management/ecology of the bay is a Coastal SEES topic.
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NSF Coastal SEES grantees are studying communities threatened by harmful algae blooms.
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As sea level rises, the coast of Louisiana begins to go underwater.
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NSF Coastal SEES awardees are studying climate change effects on California Current fisheries.
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NSF awards $15.9 million to foster new understanding of biological systems on regional to continental scales .-

Macrosystems biology and early NEON science awards support predictive understanding of large-scale biological responses to climate, land-use change

NSF MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science researchers are studying tree genes to canopies.
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September 22, 2016

Have you looked closely at a stream, lake or woodland and observed changes in it over time? That's exactly what scientists are trying to do on a larger, regional-to-continental scale -- a macrosystems biology scale.

Macrosystems biology might be called biological sciences writ large. To better detect, understand and predict the effects of climate and land-use changes on organisms and ecosystems at these large scales, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Biological Sciences has awarded $15.9 million for 12 new MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) Science projects.

Early NEON Science grants go to projects that don't otherwise fit into the macrosystems biology focus on regional- to continental-scale questions, but use or leverage NEON data and/or NEON samples and specimens to address innovative ecological or other biological questions, or develop analytic or computational tools that enhance the use and value of NEON data.

How will the biosphere respond to natural and human-induced changes across a range of time and space scales? What is the pace and pattern of these responses? What are the effects on ecosystem services -- such as the availability of freshwater -- across regions and continents?

"Our current understanding of the biosphere is largely based on knowledge derived from small plot research or from satellite-scale remote sensing," says James Olds, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences. "But the basic scientific knowledge needed to predict the consequences of climate and land-use change, or invasive species effects on living systems, is difficult to obtain from studies conducted at local or global scales. We need to look at them at the regional-to-continental scale."

That's where NSF's MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science awards come in, says Olds. "They allow us to study issues that have become critical to the future of our planet in ways that will foster a new understanding of, for example, the ecology of major cities and the water quality of lakes in the continental U.S."

A significant part of these new approaches involves the integration of biology with other fields, including the geosciences, engineering, mathematical and physical sciences, and social, economic and behavioral sciences.

How are regional-scale processes in plant and animal invasions, and in disease transmission, shaped by continent-wide environmental and land-use patterns? How can continent-wide data lead to better forecasts of disease outbreaks? How do invasive species and infectious diseases arrive at new locations, sometimes across great distances?

MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science investigators are seeking answers.

Among the topics awardees will address are: forest function from genes to canopies; how local and migratory foraging affects networks of plants, pollinators and pathogens; alternative ecological futures for the "American Residential Macrosystem" (our homes and lawns) in six study cities from Boston to Los Angeles; and "mice-o-scapes": understanding the effects of climate and landscape change on small mammal ecology over the past 100 years.

The projects crisscross regions and continents, and bring together scientists from biological sciences, geosciences and other fields in an effort to find out what makes Earth's biosphere tick.

2016 MacroSystems Biology and Early NEON Science Projects

Jennifer Cotton, California State University, Northridge:

RUI/Collaborative Research: MSB-ECA: Mice-o-scapes: Using isotopes to understand the effect of climate and landscape change on small mammal ecology over the past 100 years

Michael Dietze, Boston University:

Collaborative Proposal: MSB-ENSA: The Near-term Ecological Forecasting Initiative

Songlin Fei, Purdue University:

MSB-FRA Modeling Invasion Dynamics Across Scales (MIDAS)

Peter Groffman, City University of New York-Advance Science Research Center:

Collaborative Research: MSB-FRA: Alternative ecological futures for the American Residential Macrosystem

Catherine Hulshof, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez:

MSB-ECA: Climate change and plants on unusual soils: Detecting and modeling ecosystem response of Caribbean serpentine floras

Jaclyn Matthes, Wellesley College: