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Wednesday, February 7, 2018. 12:00 PM.  Webinar: Making estuarine shoreline science relevant to managers and policymakers. Beth Turner, NOAA and Tom Jordan, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Sponsored by NOAA National Ocean Service, More information here. 

Abstract: Shoreline management decisions are typically done on a local or state scale, but have implications for estuarine ecosystems at a wider regional scale. Our Mid-Atlantic shorelines project was developed from the need for better knowledge about how shoreline hardening influences the ecology of adjacent estuarine systems. But better knowledge does not automatically lead to better policy and management. We engaged an advisory group of managers to help guide the science towards regional management and policy goals. This seminar will discuss how the process worked to bring management and policy input to the science and vice versa. The science team was able to make modifications to their sampling and analyses based on manager’s recommendations, and the scientific results are being incorporated into the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Goal Implementation Teams, planning for NOAA Habitat Focus Areas, and state management efforts. About the Speakers: Beth Turner is an oceanographer and program manager in the NCCOS Competitive Research Program, where she manages projects dealing with multiple stresses and ocean acidification. Beth has worked at NOAA for 20 years at the intersection of science and its application. Prior to coming to NOAA, she was a program manager at the Office of Naval Research and a project manager at the Ocean Studies Board of the US National Academy of Sciences. Beth holds a Bachelor’s in Biology from Texas Christian University, a Master’s in Marine Environmental Science from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Delaware. She was trained as a marine benthic ecologist, and completed post-doctoral research at Rutgers University and the University of Maryland. Dr. Thomas Jordan is a Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). He received a BS in Biology from Bucknell University, Pennsylvania; and a PhD in Biology from Boston University, Massachusetts. His research is on the transport and transformation of the nitrogen and phosphorus in ecosystems. Human alterations of the global cycles of these essential plant nutrients have led to their overabundance in aquatic ecosystems and detrimental impacts on coastal waters worldwide. Since starting at SERC in 1980, Jordan has studied the sources of nutrient releases from watersheds, the uptake of nutrients by wetlands and riparian forests, and the fates and effects of nutrients in estuaries, especially in Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.