Research Overview
National estuarine research reserves are living laboratories, ideal sites for research and long-term monitoring. By understanding how estuaries function and change over time, scientists are in a better position to predict how coastal ecosystems will respond to climate change and natural and human-induced disturbances both locally and on a national level.
Monitoring. The monitoring program (known as the System-Wide Monitoring Program, or SWMP) provides long-term data on water quality, weather, biological communities, habitat, and land-use and land-cover characteristics. The use of standardized instrumentation and protocols for data collection at each reserve establishes the National Estuarine Research Reserve System as a coordinated network of coastal observing sites for detecting and understanding environmental change.
Water quality monitoring collects data on nutrients, temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. A minimum of four water quality stations with automated data loggers are deployed across a gradient of environmental conditions. Reserve weather stations collect information on air temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure, rainfall, and photosynthetically active radiation. Biological monitoring measures biodiversity, habitat, and population characteristics. Watershed and land use classifications provide land-use and land-use change information.
SWMP data are available from the NOAA-funded Centralized Data Management Office, which also conducts extensive data quality control. Each reserve also has at least one water quality station and one weather station providing immediate, real-time information.
Research. Reserve research is focused on how environmental factors (including nutrient loading, climate change, invasive species, and storms) impact coastal ecosystems. This research, coupled with the monitoring data, provides a strong, science-based foundation for addressing coastal management challenges. In addition, the NOAA-funded Science Collaborative keeps community relevance in the forefront by bringing the users of the science into the research process.