NOAA Awards over $680,000 to South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium

NOAA AWARDS OVER $680,000 TO SOUTH CAROLINA
SEA GRANT CONSORTIUM

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium has received a grant totaling $682,837 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The grant will support the Urbanization and Southeastern Estuarine Systems (USES) research project. This project is designed to define, measure and model the impacts of urbanization on coastal estuaries of the southeastern United States. Under the guidance of the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine Biology and Coastal Research at the University of South Carolina (USC), the multi-disciplinary USES research unit was formed and has conducted research since 1990. USES is composed of scientists from the Baruch Institute.

“NOAA and the Bush Administration are constantly working to improve the understanding of our environment to strengthen regional initiatives, such as estuarine research in the southeastern United States,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “This grant to the University of South Carolina will help advance knowledge critical to those efforts in the southeast and throughout the nation.”

Each year, NOAA awards approximately $900 million in grants to members of the academic, scientific and business communities to assist the agency in fulfilling its mission to study the Earth’s natural systems in order to predict environmental change, manage ocean resources, protect life and property and provide decision makers with reliable scientific information. NOAA goals and programs reflect a commitment to these basic responsibilities of science and service to the nation for the past 33 years.

The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources. To learn more about NOAA, please visit http://www.noaa.gov.