The U.S. benefits from a wealth of resources and activities that depend on healthy coastal habitats. However, these habitats are being degraded by extensive hardening of shorelines due to climate-driven sea level rise, increasing shoreline development, land use changes in coastal watersheds, pollution, and invasions of non-native species. In the Mid-Atlantic region alone, coastal development [...]
Management agencies are struggling to balance the pressures of coastal development with the conservation and protection of the coastal environment. Representatives of several management groups convened on February 29 to review progress on a NCCOS project studying the ecosystem effects of shoreline hardening, and offer suggestions on linking research results to regional management and policy. This marked the second [...]
Sixty years of monitoring data analyzed by scientists sponsored by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science has revealed a smaller dead zone in late summer in the Chesapeake Bay. The early summer dead zone is larger and seems to have a number of causes, but excessive nutrients are the main culprit for the later [...]
New published research by scientists at the National Centers for Coastal Science demonstrates an improved approach for calculating and comparing bioeffects levels in different places. Using a single numerical score, rather than the traditional system based on 3 distinct data sets (benthic community structure, sediment contamination, and sediment toxicity, known as the sediment quality triad) [...]
NCCOS has awarded a team of researchers to predict the impact of hypoxia on commercially and ecologically important finfish and oysters living in the shallow waters of Chesapeake Bay. The project is a planned five-year grant estimated at nearly $1.6 million. The Smithsonian Institution will lead a team on this effort that includes the University of [...]
NOAA has awarded Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution $120,000 as part of an anticipated three-year, nearly $500,000 project, to determine how nitrogen and phosphorus promote brown tides on the East Coast. Funds were awarded through the interagency Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) program, represented at NOAA by the National Centers for Coastal [...]
National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science researchers and their collaborators found that ten invasive tunicate species are fouling shellfish aquaculture operations along much of the U.S. East Coast, causing decreased growth rates, increased mortality, and high maintenance costs. The survey identified the locations of highest fouling, which will be used to develop a plan to [...]
Background First discovered in the late 1980s, Pfiesteria bloomed in 1997 in Chesapeake Bay tributaries in association with fish kills and human health problems, resulting in large economic losses due to lost seafood sales and tourism. That outbreak led to a large research effort to understand the causes and prevent or minimize the impacts of [...]