By Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Coastal margins sit at the interface between the sea and the land, with fresh water on one end, the ocean on the other. Home to about half the world’s population, the resources they provide are vital for recreation, transportation and other services.
Moreover, they are exquisitely sensitive to such influences as development, climate change and population growth, among other things.
For this reason, “we are trying to understand coastal margins well enough to be able to predict changes in the coming decades,” says António Baptista, a professor in the division of environmental and biomolecular systems at Oregon Health & Science University. “We want to ensure that society can prepare for the impacts of climate change and of increasing use of natural resources, rather than to merely react to them.”
Baptista directs the Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction, whose goal is to study environments at the sea-land interface, and disseminate objective information to regulatory agencies, local governments and other policymakers, as well as to the public, to help in their decision-making.
“We build our science in ways that both advance scientific understanding and address management issues that are important for the region and the country,” Baptista says. “Practical translation of science is part of our culture.”
The center, currently in its sixth year, is based at the Oregon Health & Science University, with a wide range of academic and non-academic partners, including Oregon State University, the University of Washington, Portland State University, and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies.
The center is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, and receives about $4 million annually in NSF funding.
Center scientists are directing much of their research on the Columbia River, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on areas where the fresh water meets the ocean. The Columbia, more than 1,200 miles long, flows from the base of the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, to the Pacific Ocean, forming most of the border between Washington and Oregon.
The river and its tributaries long have been integral to the region’s economy, and the river has been heavily developed during the past century, particularly as a source of hydroelectric power. The latter is subject to the provisions of a 1964 treaty between the United States and Canada for power and flood control, which benefits both countries.
The treaty has no specified end date, but allows either country to pull out any time after 2024, as long as there is at least ten years notice. Many expect Canada, the site of major storage dams, to renegotiate its terms of the agreement, and a review of the treaty currently is underway.
Among other things, changes in the treaty could have a major impact on four Native American tribes who collectively maintain fishing rights in about a quarter of the Columbia River basin, and several regional and federal agencies, including Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.
“Understanding the possible implications of a renegotiated Columbia River Treaty on the ecological function of the estuary is one example of how the center’s science links quite directly to management issues,” Baptista says.
Supporting the Columbia River estuary research is a system the center calls a “collaboratory,” which brings together sensors and computer models with the people who need the information these technologies produce. The sensor and models’ predictions flow to and from an open-access database, which is available to scientists, managers and laypeople.
The center deploys sensors from a variety of locations: ocean buoys, unmanned vehicles that roam the continental shelf along the coasts of Oregon and Washington, or in piles or docks in the estuary. Several docks literally serve as riverside laboratories, with pumping systems that bring water from the estuary into any number of sensors, or into bottles that scientists archive for future analysis.
The researchers are especially interested in learning more about estuaries, which are partially enclosed bodies of water along the coast where freshwater from rivers and streams meets and mixes with salt water from the ocean.
“Estuaries like the Columbia River see large fluctuations of salt content in the water over a single tidal cycle, often ranging from near freshwater to near ocean water conditions,” Baptista says. “These fluctuations make the chemistry of estuaries special.
“Estuaries function as natural bioreactors that modulate the impact of rivers on the productivity and health of the oceans,” he adds. “One of our goals is to understand that role for the estuary of a large river.”
Center scientists also want to understand the effects both of the river and the ocean upon ecological “hotspots” in the estuary ecosystem.
“We hypothesize that three hotspots have a disproportionately large role on biogeochemical transformations within the estuary,” Baptista says. “Our science initiatives for the next five years focus on characterizing these hotspots, anticipating that they will be key to understanding the dynamics and function of the estuary, both now and over the coming decades.
“Predicting ecosystem changes in response to management actions and to changes in global climate change is increasingly necessary for the sustainability of coastal margins,” he adds. “The center’s collaboratory is bringing scientifically sound predictions closer to reality for the Columbia River.”
Additionally, the center supports education and training programs at the graduate and undergraduate level, preparing students for careers in such fields as coastal oceanography, environmental microbiology, biogeochemistry, computational sciences and information technology. The center also works with several local organizations to sponsor K-12 programs in science, engineering and math, most on weekends and during the summer months.
Although the work of the center focuses on the Columbia River basin, the “collaboratory” concept easily could be applied elsewhere, Baptista says.
“Most of the underlying observation and prediction technologies are quite transferable across regions, as are training strategies for the next-generation workforce.” Baptista says. “Where the Columbia River experience is distinctive, and a potential blueprint for other regions, is in the synergy of efforts of scientists, educators, managers and industries around issues of common interest. That synergy is what makes the concept and technologies of collaboratories powerful, scientifically and for society."
Reader Comments