The National Estuarine Research Reserve System plays an important socio-ecological role for public engagement, science and management focused on key estuarine habitats.

The Habitat Heartbeats project is developing a monitoring system to integrate living organisms such as oysters and mussels ("biosentinels”) with existing monitoring efforts.

The Habitat Heartbeats project was featured during the 2023 virtual symposium showcasing recent scientific studies related to the restoration and health of San Diego estuaries including the Tijuana River Estuary, San Diego Bay, and Los Peñasquitos Lagoon.

A peer-reviewed article describing several of the biosensor tools and the design process used to build them, as part of the 2021 Collaborative Research project incorporating bivalve biosensors into estuary monitoring infrastructure. 

This resource contains the presenter slides, Q&A responses, recording, and presenter bios from the April 2022 webinar "Refining Techniques for High-Frequency Monitoring of Chlorophyll."

This 2022 paper which appeared in Nature discusses a modeling approach to examine the marsh ’s buffering capacity in a changing climate (from 2020 to 2100), considering a potential marsh restoration plan (from 2020 to 2025) and potential marsh loss due to sea-level rise.

This factsheet, written as a resource for a three-year Collaborative Research project, describes measures and proposed management plans for marsh resilience to create a long-term monitoring programs and national-level synthesis efforts.

This 2021 article which appeared in Ecological Engineering explores the potential for large-scale breakwaters to preserve fringing marsh vegetation in high wave energy environments.