In this project, National Estuarine Research Reserves in North and South Carolina worked to improve local understanding of climate change effects on southeastern salt marsh and provide decision makers with the information and skills they need to address these vulnerabilities. North Carolina Reserve staff members were trained in the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Coastal Habitats (CCVATCH) by their colleagues from North Inlet-Winyah Bay Reserve. This decision support tool incorporates existing information on climate change impacts with knowledge of local conditions to help users develop vulnerability scores for specific areas. The project team used CCVATCH to conduct habitat vulnerability assessments for seven estuaries in North and South Carolina, summarized regional findings to help managers in the Southeast improve salt marsh resilience, and developed guidance and outreach products. This science transfer project was funded by NOAA through the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative to promote the use of science. It did not produce any new data.

This project provided support for local governments to obtain necessary information to modernize and revise the Coos Bay estuary management plan. Through an integrative assessment, the project team leveraged knowledge from community members, synthesized and compiled existing information, and applied a triple bottom line lens (economic, social, and environmental) to portray current conditions and uses in the estuary, and generate options and recommendations for local governments to improve their estuarine and shoreland management. This integrated assessment project was funded by NOAA through the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative to evaluate options for action. It did not produce any new data.

Rising sea levels, severe storms, flooding, and erosion are reshaping the San Francisco Bay area’s coastline, threatening both natural areas and critical infrastructure. Preparing for these climate change impacts may be the greatest challenge facing local decision-makers, yet often they can’t access the information they need to plan effectively, and they are challenged by the uncertainty of how and when these impacts will occur.

People receive numerous benefits from nature, such as water purification, coastal protection, and food production. These ecosystem services are an increasingly important consideration for coastal managers as they design management interventions to protect coastal habitat. This includes National Estuarine Research Reserve managers, who are working to better understand ecosystem services across the reserve system. However, without a standardized approach it has been difficult for coastal managers to consistently incorporate ecosystem services into programs or projects. In response to this need, researchers with Duke University’s National Ecosystem Services Partnership developed Ecosystem Services Conceptual Models (ESCMs) for estuarine habitats that diagram the way a management intervention cascades through an ecological system and provides benefits to people. The Duke team built on previous work that created an ecosystem services modeling approach for salt marsh. In partnership with the Rookery Bay and North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserves and their stakeholders, the team led a series of workshops to produce site-specific and generalized Ecosystem Services Conceptual Models for mangrove and oyster habitat restoration in the southeast United States. This catalyst project was funded by NOAA through the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative to advance collaborative science. It did not produce any new data.

This project will 1) quantify pathogens, nutrients, and sediment delivery to the Rachel Carson Reserve; 2) create predictive models for shellfish and recreational waters in the North Carolina Reserve by using this information, along with decades of historical data; 3) engage stakeholders and end users to prioritize management options; and 4) engage coastal decision makers, community members, K-12 students, and teachers in hands-on education on stormwater runoff and its impacts.

Southern California’s coastal environments are under intense development pressure. In the Tijuana River Valley, this pressure translates into the fragmentation and loss of coastal wetlands that provide invaluable services, such as water quality protection. Conserving and restoring these wetlands has become a priority for regional coastal managers, scientists, and environmental organizations. However, despite a wealth of knowledge about these coastal systems, decision-makers lack essential information to transform wetland recovery and management priorities into action.

This project combined observations with the development of a hydrodynamic model to better understand and predict water and sediment flows in the Coos estuary. The project team collected time-series data of water properties including temperature and salinity, velocity, sediment type, and sediment concentration at monitoring stations in the Coos estuary, including the first bathymetric dataset to cover the entire estuary. These were combined with existing time series and maps. Using this data, the team developed a validated hydrodynamic model that skillfully reproduced observed water properties and sediment dynamics in the estuary over a range of forcing conditions (e.g., river discharge, winds, tides). The team then used the model to run two perturbation experiments that analyzed a proposed deepening and widening of the estuary’s main navigation channel and examined historic estuary conditions. The project provided users with a dynamic picture of estuary conditions and habitat, and has informed an update to the estuarine management plan and fisheries habitat maps, improved the success of oyster restoration projects, and increased data efficiency among community stakeholders.

To restore the ecosystem services lost through coastal habitat degradation, restoration projects have been conducted but most lack monitoring or evaluations. Limited monitoring and evaluation prevents comparisons across designs to determine which are the most functional sustainable, and cost-effective. Additionally, information about the advantages of and how to perform restoration projects is currently limited. Limited comparisons across restoration designs and the sparse information on how to conduct restoration projects significantly hinders the implementation of projects. This project team engaged researchers, environmental managers, stakeholders, and end-users to address some of these issues. The team quantified the functionality, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness of several coastal restoration designs at the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The designs compared plots planted with nursery grown plugs with plots comprised of standing natural marsh both with and without offshore breakwaters. The study found that offshore breakwaters enhanced natural plant growth, but not nursery grown plants. However, it is possible that this effect is time dependent as the positive effect on natural plant growth was seen beginning six years after breakwater installation while the nursery plants had only been planted two and a half years ago. Information gained from this research and the regulatory knowledge of the collaborative team have been combined with pre-existing literature to create user friendly outreach materials and workshop for consultants, landscapers, and marine contractors. This research and outreach will improve the effectiveness and ease of implementation of coastal restoration projects.

This project tested the use of eDNA methods to identify fish communities, assess biodiversity, and detect invasive crabs in different types of estuaries and connected streams. Samples were collected at Apalachicola, Great Bay, He’eai, Hudson, South Slough and Wells Reserves in 2018 and 2019. The project deployed two methods to analyze DNA in water samples: metabarcoding that identifies a wide range of species, and digital droplet Polymerase Chain Reaction (ddPCR) that identifies a single target organism. The team conducted baseline community assessments for fish at five reserve sites and conducted a survey of anadromous fish in a tributary stream at the sixth reserve. The project found that fish community and biodiversity assessments are well suited to eDNA applications, while invasive crabs are much harder to detect because they do not shed much DNA. The project developed protocols and recommendations for the collection, filtering, and extraction of eDNA samples at estuarine sites, and provided information which will support the design of sampling programs for fish communities.

Tidal wetlands are recognized for their important role in carbon sequestration, as well as for their potential to become significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions when converted to other land uses. The substantial quantities of carbon captured and stored by tidal wetlands—termed “blue carbon”—is an ecosystem service of great interest to those developing regional, national, and global climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, including carbon markets. While carbon stocks data have been collected in several parts of the world to quantify the carbon sequestration potential of tidal wetlands, there is a scarcity of such information in the Pacific Northwest.