Intellectual Merit: The topic of coastal ocean simulation is central to many scientific questions and engineering challenges in ocean and environmental science today. The increase in human population in coastal regions, with concomitant exacerbation of issues associated with marine resource management, enforcement and security, has led to an increase in the importance of a quantitative understanding and prediction of coastal processes. All of these activities emphasize the expanding public and national interest in understanding coastal ocean phenomena, in their natural multi-disciplinary setting. Coastal Ocean simulation today requires physical, biological and geological simulations. The couplings of these sub-fields have led to specific outcomes of public and scientific interest: site-specific population dynamics of important species, environmental impacts of industrial actions, harmful algal blooms, offshore drilling, changes in coastal geomorphology, and marine operations (which include military and civilian issues).This Gordon Research Conference is devoted to the understanding and prediction of processes occurring in the estuarine, shelf, and shelf-break regions of the ocean. These are regions of the marine system that are subject to intense human forcing and interaction.
Broader Impacts: This conference seeks, as do all GRC's, to gather leading people in the field and to bring them into contact with each other and with graduate students in relevant disciplines in an effort to seed new thoughts across the field. During this year's program eight of the thirty speakers and discussion leaders are women.
