9505729 Malone Funds are provided for a multi-institutional workshop to discuss the roles of marine laboratories in implementing priorities for research and monitoring in the coastal zone. The workshop is being sponsored by NSF, NOAA Coastal Ocean Program, and EPA Office of Research and Development. The workshop's goal is to identify mechanisms by which marine laboratories can best address national needs in coastal monitoring and research. The potential role(s) of marine laboratories will be discussed in light of several areas of interest: 1) multidisciplinary research that transcends scales of biological organization from molecules to organisms and ecosystems; 2) multidisciplinary research that transcends the traditional boundaries of ecosystems constituting the land-sea interface from drainage basin to coastal ocean; 3) cost-effective monitoring networks that will not only document environmental variability and detect trends but will also provide a framework for hypothesis testing to reveal causes and consequences of such trends; 4) information flow and liaison between the research community, federal and state agencies, and the public; and 5) regional distributed data and information management systems for scientific analysis and the formulation of integrated strategies for coastal zone management. The workshop is to organized under the auspices of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML).
