The NERRS Science Collaborative funds user-driven, collaborative research and knowledge exchange activities that address critical coastal management needs identified by reserves.
What is Collaborative Research?
The scientific community has become increasingly aware of the need to address the gap between the production of science and its application to management and policy decision-making. Collaborative research is a type of multidisciplinary, participatory research that integrates decision-makers into the research process and fosters two-way communication and learning. It presents a promising way to increase the usability of science and to address the gap between science production and use. Learn more about collaborative research here.
What are Critical Management Needs?
Program Research Priorities
Consistent with the NERRS Strategic Plan, NOAA has identified the following research priorities for Science Collaborative funding opportunities in 2024 - 2029:
- Community Resilience and Adaptability - Understanding how communities rely on and engage with estuarine systems, particularly aspects of human dimensions and cultural ecosystem services, and what behavior changes may enhance resilience to changes to those systems.
- Habitat Adaptability - Investigating options for improving estuarine habitat resilience and migration, including response to habitat stressors (e.g., sea level rise, marine debris, invasive species, coastal development, native species displacement, climate change); processes for identifying, prioritizing, and restoring sites; and monitoring and evaluating success.
- Watershed Dynamics - Understanding the impacts to water quality and quantity from land use, excessive nutrient pollution (eutrophication), and contamination in estuarine ecosystems, and the options for management and mitigation; investigating drivers of change on the watershed scale and impacts to biogeochemical cycles and substrates.
- Change Analysis - Investigating and understanding marsh health through research using long-term monitoring data and information, originating from programs such as the NERRS System-wide Monitoring Program and associated monitoring efforts; conduct estuary condition analyses.
Reserve Management and Knowledge Exchange Needs
Projects supported by the NERRS Science Collaborative must be developed in close collaboration with at least one reserve within the National Estuarine Research Reserve System to ensure the work addresses a current need. NOAA annually solicits and compiles reserve management and knowledge exchange needs, which are referenced in annual proposal solicitations from the Science Collaborative. To learn more about the current topics and issues of interest to each reserve, review the Annual Summary of Reserve Management and Knowledge Exchange Needs.
Who Can Apply?
Reserves, non-profit organizations, private, and for-profit organizations are all eligible recipients for Science Collaborative funding. However, non-Reserve parties must work in partnership with one or more reserves and meet all requirements described by the RFP.