This award is for initial planning of a possible workshop that will bring together the coastal science community and identify research priorities for the next decade. The workshop and associated online discussion will be dedicated to collecting and synthesizing transformative ideas from coastal research communities on the future of coastal research and to identify gaps that need to be filled to achieve an understanding of coastal systems at a level appropriate for contemporary challenges to the sustainability of human interactions with coastal environments.
The planners will discuss how to target research communities addressing questions in various coastal and allied environments (e.g., nearshore, beach and surf zone hydro and morphodynamics; sandy coastlines and barrier islands; rocky coastlines; deltas; estuaries; marshes, mangroves and other tidal settings; carbonate coasts; polar settings. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to be represented in the workshop will include ecomorphodynamics (bio/physical couplings); anthropogenic components (human/landscape couplings; both couplings with direct human manipulations and land-use effects on coastal environments); terrestrial/coastal interactions (fluvial couplings with coastline as well as delta dynamics); shelf/coastal interactions (shallow-water and shelf processes, climate and sea-level-rise effects); biogeochemistry and atmospheric interactions.
On a global basis, 75% of the world’s population is located in coastal regions, and human population in the coastal zone is projected to continue to increase over the next several decades. These regions are highly modified and have been shaped by human activities over time with the greatest deterioration of these systems having occurred over recent decades to centuries. Coastal regions provide a variety of important ecological functions and services such as the processing of nutrients and other pollutants, carbon accumulation and storage, providing refuge and nursery areas that support fisheries production, and sediment trapping in wetlands and other habitats that provide protection during floods and storms. These functions are not only important ecologically, but have important implications for the health, economy and well being of humans. Climate change is expected to further modify these systems by altering freshwater delivery, contributing to rising sea level, and increasing runoff from land, which will influence their capacity to provide ecological functions and protect human society. In order to identify key gaps in our knowledge and potential solutions for managing current and anticipated threats to the coastal zone, there is an immediate need for broad input from scientists representing multiple disciplines and working in a variety of ecosystems at the land-ocean interface, as well as social scientists, educators, economists and policy makers. In response to these needs, this project developed a proposal for a 2-day workshop that would bring together the broad coastal science community and identify research priorities for the next decade. The proposed workshop would be complemented by an online discussion, facilitating input from the larger community. The objective of the workshop and associated online discussion was to collect and synthesize transformative ideas from coastal research communities on the future of coastal research and to identify gaps that need to be filled to achieve a modern understanding of coastal systems at a level appropriate for contemporary challenges. The goal of the resulting white paper would be to serve NSF and other federal agencies in advancing research initiatives and programs focused on the coastal zone. Although NSF ultimately had to cancel the workshop, the materials provided in the proposal remain highly relevant to the National Science Foundation and other agencies and could be used to either conduct a workshop in the future or develop a new research initiative centered on the coastal zone.
