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Collaborative Science for Estuaries Webinar Series

Join us for monthly webinars featuring project teams supported by the NERRS Science Collaborative. Speakers share their unique approaches to addressing current coastal and estuarine management issues. Learn about new methods to integrate technical experts and users of project outputs into the research process, and how their research results and products might inform your work.

Be sure to check back periodically for session recordings and other relevant products, or sign up (Mailing List | RSS) to receive notifications about new resources and upcoming webinars.

Upcoming Webinars

Wed 12/4/2024, 3 - 4pm EST
Speaker(s):
Wally Fulweiler and Lena Champlin

Salt marsh ecosystems are well-known for their carbon storage capacity – they are also hotspots of respiration, which produces greenhouse gases that can counteract the long-term carbon storage. At the same time, there is a paucity of spatial and temporal measurements of greenhouse gas fluxes in salt marsh ecosystems; this lack of data impairs the ability to manage salt marsh ecosystems effectively for carbon storage. Data are limited by various factors, including logistical and financial constraints of measuring greenhouse gases.

A team from Boston University and the five New England NERRs worked together on a one-year catalyst project to test sensors that measure carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity in salt marsh environments. The team conducted five field trips throughout the year, incorporating iterative feedback on instrument design, ease of deployment, and alignment with existing monitoring efforts at the NERRs. In this webinar, the team will describe the project’s approach to designing low-cost, ultra-portable instruments for measuring greenhouse gas fluxes in salt marshes, major findings that emerged from the work, as well as key applications of the technology for salt marsh restoration and research.

Speakers:

wally fulweiler

Robinson W. "Wally" Fulweiler, Boston University

Wally leads the Coastal Ecology and Biogeochemistry Laboratory, which focuses on how anthropogenic activities affect the ecology and elemental cycling of ecosystems on a variety of scales, from local nutrient loading to global climate change. Recently, her group has been developing new instrumentation that will aid in constraining coastal nutrient and carbon budgets and will help increase access to low-cost technology for democratizing science. Wally is the project lead and came up with the original idea behind the new instrumentation and application to the NERR system.

lena champlin

Lena K. Champlin, Boston University

Lena’s research in coastal ecosystems integrates spatial analysis to quantify ecosystem complexity, historical proxies to contextualize changes in nutrients over time, and collaborative research approaches. During her postdoc, Lena is conducting interdisciplinary research on salt marsh blue carbon and communicating coastal science to public audiences through creative media. Lena helped manage this collaborative project, contributing to fieldwork, integrating feedback, and presenting the results.

Tue 1/28/2025, 3 - 4pm EST
Speaker(s):
Matt Kimball and Robert Dunn

Description coming soon.

Past Webinars

Wed 11/6/2024, 3 - 4pm EST
Speaker(s):
Marae West, Even Buckland, and Ray Danner

Over half of the NERRs have Motus wildlife tracking stations, which provide new information on the presence and movements of animals. Given the NERRS’ increasing number of Motus stations, growth of the resulting databases, and interest in these data from within and outside of the NERRs, there is an opportunity to develop a collaborative community and supporting infrastructure within the NERRS. This catalyst project’s five objectives were to: create a website to display Motus data across the NERRS, develop educational resources, develop an in-person education experience at the North Carolina NERR, construct towers at four sites that previously did not have towers, and promote communication and collaboration among NERRS staff. In this webinar, the project team demonstrates how to use the products that they developed, and discusses how to learn more about Motus and the state of the network within the NERRS and get involved.

Speakers:

marae west

Marae West, Cape Fear Bird Observatory

Marae West is the board chair and science advisor for the Cape Fear Bird Observatory which is based in Wilmington, North Carolina. Maraes serves as the project lead on this NERRS Science Collaborative Catalyst grant. 

evan buckland

Evan Buckland, Cape Fear Bird Observatory

Evan is the co-founder and managing director at the Cape Fear Bird Observatory. Evan serves as the technical lead on the grant and had a hand in every part of the project and managed all of the technicians on the project. 

ray danner

Ray Danner, Althouse & Meade

Ray is a senior research scientist at Althouse & Meade. Ray serves as the collaborative lead. His main focus was to develop R-code to analyze Motus data and to pair the data with SWMP data. He also helped build the dashboard built in this project. 

Fri 10/4/2024, 3 - 4pm EDT
Speaker(s):
Kait Reinl, Paul Hanson, and Sylvia Yang

The National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) provides an opportunity to compare site-based monitoring data from a wide range of estuaries across the nation to discover patterns and trends in ecosystem dynamics. Despite decades of SWMP data being amassed – and the Reserve System’s interest in investigating long-term changes in estuarine systems – limited personnel capacity has often prevented these datasets from being fully utilized. To address this need, a catalyst project developed a graduate level class at University of Wisconsin-Madison for Spring 2024 with dual learning objectives: a technical objective to learn ecological big data skills and a collaborative objective to learn how to conduct user-driven collaborative science. In this webinar, the project team shares their journey of developing and implementing the class, highlights student findings, and demonstrates analyses that they used to address science and management questions. They also discuss lessons learned along the way and future opportunities for this teaching model to be used by the NERRS and partners.

Speakers:

Kait Reinl

Kait Reinl, Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve

Dr. Kaitlin (Kait) Reinl is the Research Coordinator for the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. Kait served as the project lead, working with the project team to develop the graduate level course and teaching materials. Kait also co-taught the class alongside Paul Hanson (Technical Lead).

Paul Hanson

Paul Hanson, University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology

Paul Hanson is a UW scientist who studies lakes, with an emphasis on modeling water quality in systems around the world. Paul served as the technical lead, working with the project team to develop the analytical aspects of the course. Paul co-taught the class alongside Kait Reinl. 

Sylvia Yang

Sylvia Yang, Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve

Dr. Sylvia Yang is the Research Coordinator for the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve at the Washington State Department of Ecology. Sylvia assisted the project team as the collaborative lead and helped to adapt the NSC’s Guide to Collaborative Science for the graduate students to use during the course. 

Thu 7/25/2024, 3 - 4pm EDT
Speaker(s):
Hannah Ramage, Laura Reynolds, and Arianna Stokes

      

Collaborative Science Conversations          
The NOAA RESTORE Science and NERRS Science Collaborative programs continue teaming up to bring you the voices of project teams from the field through our Collaborative Conversations webinar series. These sessions dig into the unique value of collaborative science, what it feels like in practice, and tips and strategies for success. 


You’ve probably heard the phrase meaningful engagement. Maybe you’ve even used the phrase yourself. But have you ever found yourself wondering, what exactly do we mean by meaningful engagement and how do we achieve it? Many of us recognize that engaging meaningfully with partners is at the heart of effective collaboration. However, it’s not always easy to define what meaningful engagement is, and what it means in practice.

In this webinar, the NERRS Science Collaborative and the NOAA RESTORE Science Program dived into the practical realities of meaningful engagement and built on the January 2024 NERRS Science Collaborative webinar that provided a framework for understanding meaningful engagement. The webinar featured the voices of two collaborative science project teams who shared their project-specific experiences. Together, we dug into examples of what meaningful engagement is, what it looks like in practice, and what strategies we might use to foster it during collaboration.

About RESTORE: The NOAA RESTORE Science Program was authorized by Congress in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to carry out research, observation, and monitoring to support the long-term sustainability of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, including its fisheries. The Science Program supports teams of resource managers, researchers, and stakeholders committed to working together to produce science that helps answer the questions resource managers are facing.

Speakers:

ramage headshot

Hannah Ramage, Lake Superior NERR, WI

Hannah Ramage has worked at the Lake Superior Reserve for 7 years as the Monitoring Coordinator. She oversees the System-wide Monitoring Program in the St. Louis River Estuary in Superior, WI. She mentors students, conducts water quality research, and works closely with partners on how best to collect and use data to the benefit of all estuary users. Currently, she is the project lead on a Collaborative Research grant aimed at creating a more targeted and efficient monitoring plan to detect algal blooms and hypoxia in the estuary.

laura reynolds headshot

Laura Reynolds, University of Florida

Laura Reynolds is an assistant professor in the Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences Department at the University of Florida, where she is engaged in education, research, and extension. She leads a group of graduate students, postdocs, and scientists who conduct research that focuses on biodiversity and stability of aquatic plant based ecosystems primarily seagrass meadows. The team’s extension work ensures that this research gets effectively communicated and used by those folks managing and restoring aquatic ecosystems.

arianna stokes headshot

Arianna Stokes, NERRS Science Collaborative

Arianna Stokes is a research associate with the NERRS Science Collaborative. Her work with the Science Collaborative helps support opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, the development of collaborative science resources, program communication, and data archival. Prior to this role, Arianna completed a graduate degree at the University of Michigan where she worked with the Science Collaborative to research meaningful engagement practices used in collaborative science projects across the NERRS network.

Fri 5/24/2024, 1 - 2pm EDT
Speaker(s):
Cory Riley and Lisa Wise

Since 1994, collaboration among the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership has resulted in the protection of over 82,000 acres in New Hampshire’s coastal watershed. Resources such as the 2006 Land Conservation Plan – which informed watershed protection goals, identified regional priorities, and guided strategic decision-making for over a decade – have contributed to this success by evaluating regional progress and promoting understanding of conservation efforts to date. In 2021, the Nature Conservancy of New Hampshire released an updated version of the plan that reflects new conservation priorities for climate adaptation, water resource protection, wildlife habitat and landscape connectivity corridors, and working lands.

Supported by a science transfer grant, the Connect to Protect project facilitated the transfer of knowledge from the updated plan to intended users in the region through a focused outreach effort which included a needs assessment, formal knowledge transfer workshops, and a technical assistance program. In addition to facilitating knowledge transfer and outreach, the project provides a strong example of how funds can be leveraged to launch and support lasting regional relationships that continue beyond a project timeline. In this webinar, team members discuss the approach and impacts of the project, including where this work sits within the broader context of the region and how collaborative outreach increases the reach of conservation work.

Speakers:

Cory Riley, Great Bay NERR

Cory Riley is the Manager at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, where she works closely with partners to promote clean water and healthy coastal habitats in the region. For this project, Cory recruited, organized, and facilitated the Advisory Team that provided external advice as needed on high-level decisions, project activities, and products.

Lisa Wise, University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension

Lisa Wise is a Program Manager with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, where she works with New Hampshire communities to build awareness of and resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. Lisa led the Outreach Team during the second half of the project, which conducted a needs assessment of end users, oversaw the development of the Connect to Protect website, planned and conducted science transfer workshops, and completed technical assistance for communities and land trusts.

Thu 3/7/2024, 2 - 3pm EST
Speaker(s):
Chris Janousek, Jazmin Dagostino, Mackenzie Taggart, and Adrian Laufer

For nearly a decade, the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group (Working Group) has brought scientists, planners, policy makers and others together to identify and collaboratively fill priority blue carbon data gaps for Pacific Northwest coastal wetlands, archive those data in a new Working Group-created regional blue carbon database, and make those data available to individuals and agencies working to advance regional climate mitigation initiatives. Through the collaboration of researchers, planners, policy professionals, and others from universities, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies throughout the region, the Working Group has systematically collected and analyzed new–and compiled existing–regional data on carbon stocks, carbon sequestration, and methane emissions and archived them in the Working Group’s Northeast Pacific Regional Blue Carbon Database. 

This two-part webinar series covers the Working Group’s latest research, including data collection to support blue carbon comparisons across different natural and land use types, as well as the ways these data are used in the development of climate mitigation policies and blue carbon tools. 

View resources from part 1: Filling Blue Carbon Data Gaps | February 29, 2024

Part 2: Blue Carbon Data Applications | March 7, 2024
This session highlights the Working Group’s and partners’ application of regionally specific blue carbon data for the development of climate mitigation policies and blue carbon tools, including an emissions inventory supporting Oregon’s new Natural and Working Lands legislation, blue carbon mapping, and the development of a regional blue carbon calculator.

Session 2 Speakers:

Chris Janousek, Oregon State University

Chris is a research professor at OSU and has worked on tidal wetland ecology along the Pacific coast for two decades. He has led or co-led several regional blue carbon projects and curates the Northeast Pacific Blue Carbon database.

Jazmin Dagostino, Pew Charitable Trusts

Jazmin Dagostino is an associate on Pew’s U.S. Conservation project, working to advance state and federal natural climate solutions. She focuses primarily on state efforts to incorporate coastal blue carbon and peatland management strategies into climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Adrian Laufer, Sea & Shore Solutions

Adrian Laufer is a coastal & marine policy and management practitioner with a background in GIS and spatial science. She is the CEO of Sea & Shore Solutions, a women-owned consulting firm specializing in bridging the gap between science and application in coastal management and marine policy. Laufer collaborated with Pew and others to develop a user-friendly mapping resource to showcase blue carbon values and possible restoration futures.

mackenzie taggart

Mackenzie Taggart, Silvestrum Climate Associates

Mackenzie Taggart is a wetland scientist specializing in coastal blue carbon dynamics. With a keen focus on merging science and policy, she is committed to crafting innovative tools for communities actively involved in natural climate solutions.

Thu 2/29/2024, 2 - 3pm EST
Speaker(s):
Chris Janousek, Trevor Williams, Katrina Poppe, and Scott Bridgham

For nearly a decade, the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group (Working Group) has brought scientists, planners, policy makers and others together to identify and collaboratively fill priority blue carbon data gaps for Pacific Northwest coastal wetlands, archive those data in a new Working Group-created regional blue carbon database, and make those data available to individuals and agencies working to advance regional climate mitigation initiatives. Through the collaboration of researchers, planners, policy professionals, and others from universities, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies throughout the region, the Working Group has systematically collected and analyzed new–and compiled existing–regional data on carbon stocks, carbon sequestration, and methane emissions and archived them in the Working Group’s Northeast Pacific Regional Blue Carbon Database. 

This two-part webinar series covers the Working Group’s 2020-2023 research, including data collection to support blue carbon comparisons across different natural and land use types, as well as the ways these data are used in the development of climate mitigation policies and blue carbon tools.

Part 1: Filling Blue Carbon Data Gaps | February 29, 2024
This session highlights the Working Group’s 2020-2023 research designed to fill regional carbon sequestration and methane, CO2 and N2O emissions data gaps as well as the design and utility of the Northeast Pacific Regional Blue Carbon Database.

Session 1 Speakers:

Chris Janousek, Oregon State University

Chris is a research professor at OSU and has worked on tidal wetland ecology along the Pacific coast for two decades. He has led or co-led several regional blue carbon projects and curates the Northeast Pacific Blue Carbon database.

Trevor Williams, Oregon State University

Trev has been a Faculty Research Assistant in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University for 3 years focusing on environmental monitoring in tidal wetlands. Prior to OSU he was at Portland State University where he worked in agricultural systems researching nutrient input effects on water quality and greenhouse gas emissions.

Katrina Poppe, Western Washington University

Katrina is a Research Associate at Western Washington University and a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. She studies sediment, vegetation, and carbon dynamics in tidal wetlands in relation to climate change and land management. For this project she has focused on understanding patterns and predictors of soil carbon accumulation rates.

Scott Bridgham, University of Oregon

Scott is an emeritus professor at the University of Oregon. He has been doing research on climate impacts on wetlands, terrestrial ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems for 35+ years and has published extensively on those efforts. He is part of the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group scientific team, focusing on how land management in tidal wetlands affects trace gas emissions and climate forcing.

Register for Part 2:  Blue Carbon Data Applications | March 7, 2024

Tue 1/23/2024, 3 - 4pm EST
Speaker(s):
Julia Wondolleck and Arianna Stokes

Meaningful engagement has become a catchphrase in public participation. Its characteristics are assumed to be self-evident yet many struggle with its implementation and, until recently, there has been surprisingly little work shedding light on how to achieve it. The NERRS Science Collaborative, through its participation in the Reserve System, has observed how meaningful engagement is foundational to effective collaborative science and is a frequent discussion topic among NERRS project teams.

Seeking to unpack the dimensions of meaningful engagement, the Science Collaborative has supported research that draws on the experiences and insights of collaborative science teams. The research aims to answer questions such as:  What exactly does meaningful engagement mean in practice? What are the tell-tale signs when it is being achieved, and when it is not? What factors help advance it? What are the challenges to realizing it, and how might those challenges be addressed?

This webinar describes the overall research project, shares preliminary findings based on interviews with collaborative science project team members and reserve partners, and highlights how intended products can benefit collaborative science teams and others.

Speakers:

Julia Wondolleck, University of Michigan

Julia Wondolleck is an Emerita Professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and a member of the NERRS Science Collaborative team.  She has spent her professional career researching, writing, and teaching about collaborative processes in natural resource and environmental management contexts. She is supervising Arianna’s graduate research on meaningful engagement.

Arianna Stokes, University of Michigan

Arianna Stokes is a master's student at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability where she is studying participatory processes within the fields of environmental policy and environmental justice. Originally from New Hampshire, Arianna has a degree in ecology and economics from the University of California Davis. Prior to graduate school, Arianna worked in coastal New Hampshire and participated in CoastWise, a place-based coastal resilience program, at UNH Sea Grant. She is currently a science communication fellow at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. 

Thu 11/30/2023, 2 - 3pm EST
Speaker(s):
Kerstin Wasson, Charlie Endris, Andrea Woolfolk, and Suzanne Shull

Estuaries are coastal gems. To protect and restore them, we need a clear understanding of exactly where they are, where they were, and where they could be in the future. A team led by the National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRs) recently completed an ambitious effort to map estuarine habitat in and around the 30 NERRs. They used a powerful combination of NOAA resources for elevation and tidal datums to map the reach of tides, historical topographic sheets generated by NOAA’s predecessor agency to map past habitat distributions, and compared this to mapping from USFWS’s National Wetland Inventory (NWI).

Elevation-based mapping revealed that estuary extent is greater  than currently mapped in NWI. At more than two-thirds of the Reserves, the team detected tidal forests missed by NWI.  Comparison of historical maps to NWI revealed dramatically greater loss of tidal wetland extent on the Pacific coast than in other regions. The results of this investigation suggest that multiple mapping methods complement each other and should be integrated to provide a more accurate understanding of estuaries—past, present and future.

Project Lead 

  • Kerstin Wasson, Research Coordinator, Elkhorn Slough NERR

Technical Leads

  • Andrea Woolfolk, Stewardship Coordinator, Elkhorn Slough NERR
  • Charlie Endris, GIS Specialist, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
  • Suzanne Shull, GIS Specialist, Padilla Bay NERR

Collaborative Lead

  • Dan Brumbaugh, Coastal Training Program Coordinator, Elkhorn Slough NERR

Technical and Collaborative Advisor

  • Laura Brophy, Estuary Technical Group Director, Institute for Applied Ecology

Speakers:

Kerstin Wasson, Elkhorn Slough NERR

Kerstin is passionate about science-based conservation and restoration of estuaries, and complements local-placed based work in coastal California with syntheses across the national estuarine reserve system. She coordinated this project.

Charlie Endris, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

Charlie has worked as a GIS and remote sensing specialist for more than 15 years. He has focused on using digital elevation models, orthoimagery, and historical T-sheets to characterize habitat change and model projected sea level rise along coastal California. Charlie used NOAA datasets to create elevation-based models depicting maximum   
tide and lake levels for this project, and NWI for extracting existing habitat information.

Andrea Woolfolk, Elkhorn Slough NERR 

Andrea has been working on coastal ecology and land management in the Elkhorn Slough area since 1994. At the Reserve, she focuses on upland habitat management, and she particularly loves working with others to restore native grasses and wildflowers where she can. She has a deeply nerdy interest in historical ecology, and she helped map historical habitats from T-sheets for this project.

Suzanne Shull, Padilla Bay NERR 

Suzanne has been providing nearshore geospatial data, products, and support to the Padilla Bay Reserve for 25 years.  She was involved with the conversion of the historical maps to GIS map layers, comparing that to habitat maps of more current conditions (primarily NWI data), analyzing change between the two and posting the maps to ArcGIS Online.

Wed 10/18/2023, 3 - 4pm EDT
Speaker(s):
Jessica Kinsella

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is an open-source, international network of community hosted radio-telemetry receivers and wildlife researchers designed to investigate a wide variety of wildlife movement questions. Volunteer partners host and operate receiving stations across the world that autonomously listen for flying migratory animals equipped with transmitters called nanotags. Researchers rely on the receivers for movement data for a diversity of tagged wildlife, including birds, bats, and insects. Despite widespread interest in wildlife tracking and research within and beyond the Reserve system, this technology has only been used sporadically at a few reserve sites to date.

In 2018, the ACE Basin NERR received private funding to implement a Motus receiver station at partner State Park, which sparked interest from potential collaborators. Since 2020, a multi-reserve project led by the ACE Basin Reserve has held a series of workshops to provide guidance and assistance on siting, construction, installation, and interpretation of Motus sites at participating reserves. In this webinar, project lead Jessica Kinsella shares how this effort has created new partnerships and positioned the Reserve as a regional leader for the Motus initiative, while enabling partners to increase their contribution to coastal bird research and engage their intended users in coastal bird conservation and management.

Jessica Kinsella is the Stewardship Coordinator at the ACE Basin Reserve in South Carolina and served as both a collaborative lead and the project lead for the Motus project. She has extensive outreach, education, and resource management experience and, in her current role, coordinates with existing and develops new Motus-related partnerships.

Learn more about community science at the ACE Basin Reserve

Thu 6/22/2023, 3 - 4pm EDT
Speaker(s):
Julie Gonzalez, Chris Peter, Kelly Darnell, Caitlin Young, and Doug George

 

Curious about collaborative science but unsure how to get started? Maybe you’re an early career scientist and you’re worried that collaborative science goals won’t align with the metrics and rewards of the academic tenure-track system. Or maybe you’re a resource manager or steward who is intrigued about the advantages of a collaborative approach but you’re not sure how it could fit into your work.

No matter your career track or level of experience, we believe collaborative science should be accessible and that there are countless entry points and pathways to success. If you are - or are working with - someone wondering how to get started doing collaborative science, this webinar is for you. Collaborative science practitioners at different moments in their careers discuss what it takes to do collaborative science, how it’s different, and why it makes a difference. 

Collaborative Science Conversations          
The NOAA RESTORE Science and NERRS Science Collaborative programs are back at it, teaming up to bring you the voices of project teams from the field through our Collaborative Conversations webinar series. These sessions dig into the unique value of collaborative science, what it feels like in practice, and tips and strategies for success. 

About RESTORE: The NOAA RESTORE Science Program was authorized by Congress in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to carry out research, observation, and monitoring to support the long-term sustainability of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, including its fisheries. The Science Program supports teams of resource managers, researchers, and stakeholders committed to working together to produce science that helps answer the questions resource managers are facing.

Panelists:

Julie Gonzalez is a Ph.D. Candidate at University of California, Davis, and a current NOAA Margaret A. Davidson Fellow with the San Francisco Bay NERR. She is interested in estuarine community ecology, how to improve coastal habitat restoration and assessment, facilitating collaborative co-development of research projects and considering multiple stakeholder perceptions in the process. Over the past eight years she has been involved in several restoration projects along the California and Oregon coasts as both a research scientist and former Sea Grant Fellow/Project Manager with California State Coastal Conservancy. 
Chris Peter leads the research and monitoring programs at the Great Bay Reserve. He also participates in regional and national efforts that advance estuarine science, monitoring and restoration, including a regional project that is studying how sea level rise will impact our salt marshes in the future. Chris appreciates Adams Point as the gateway to the Bay and enjoys paddling on the Lamprey. Before coming to the Reserve, he was a marine and estuarine scientist at the University of New Hampshire’s Jackson Estuarine Lab. He earned a Master’s of Science in Natural Resources and a Bachelor’s of Science in Water Resource Management from the University of New Hampshire.

Kelly Darnell is the Interim Director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and is faculty in USM’s Division of Coastal Sciences. She is a coastal ecologist whose research focuses on the biology and ecology of seagrass ecosystems. Dr. Darnell frequently collaborates with natural resource managers to ensure the results of her research can be applied to management, conservation, and restoration decision-making. Dr. Darnell is also Director of the Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence, a $25M research grants program with the mission of understanding stressors on Gulf of Mexico ecosystems to facilitate sustainable use of its natural resources, and she is President of the Gulf Estuarine Research Society, a professional society whose goal is to promote research in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Moderators:

Doug George is a geological oceanographer and the program manager for the NERRS Science Collaborative. He has worked throughout the West Coast as a federal scientist, state resource manager, and environmental consultant with projects ranging from estuary restoration and living shorelines to regional sediment management and climate change adaptation. 
Caitlin Young is the Science Coordinator for the NOAA RESTORE Science Program. She leads the Science Program’s efforts to synthesize environmental and human dimension research data available for the Gulf of Mexico to design funding competitions. She has a background in geochemistry and has researched the impacts of submarine groundwater discharge on coastal ecosystems.