September 16, 2005 — Estuaries, where rivers meet the sea, are among the most productive natural systems on the planet. The edges of oceans and continents are rich and complex ecosystems, networks of plants and animals dependent on the pulse of tides and the steady flow of rivers to bring them the lifeblood of water, both salt and fresh. Vital to humans and to ocean ecosystems, estuaries provide nursery habitats for marine animals, flood control, food and recreation for humans.

Estuaries are also vulnerable systems, subject to threats such as habitat loss due to development and deteriorating water quality due to pollutants, as well as coastal storms and other natural events.

The NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a priceless collection of estuaries representing all the coastal biogeographic zones in the United States. Since the system was created by the Coastal Zone Management Act in 1972, 26 reserves have been established in 20 states and Puerto Rico, making available more than a million acres of estuarine habitat for study and protection. Day-to-day operations are managed by state agencies and/or universities. The NOAA Estuarine Reserves Division within the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management provides financial and technical assistance and leadership to coordinate the wide variety of site-specific and system-wide activities.

The reserve system serves a variety of people, from school children who take part in educational programs to graduate students and scientists who conduct reserve-based research on animals, plants and hydrology. A key mission is the system’s Coastal Training Program, which helps local government officials, resource managers and others make science-based decisions about coastal resource usage.

“Science-based decision-making is a key goal of NOAA and of the NERRs, and the quality of the decisions depends on the quality of the science,” says ERD Chief Laurie McGilvray. “That’s why in 1995 ERD established the System Wide Monitoring Program (also known as SWMP and pronounced as “swamp”) to provide a steady and large volume of data from all the reserves to ensure that the science would be of a very high quality and support improved coastal management decisions.”

SWMP began fairly simply, with just two stations in each reserve to measure water quality and one to measure weather conditions. In 2000-2001, the reserves added two water quality data loggers to expand the spatial area covered (most reserves cover a variety of habitat types, from upland areas and tidal freshwater to salt marsh and meandering creeks) and also to collect information about nutrients.

Now 10 years old, SWMP has provided scientists, decision-makers and educators with an abundance of data that have expanded the nation's knowledge of how estuarine systems work and improved its' ability to manage them for sustainability.

ERD also established the Centralized Data Management Office at the North Inlet-Winyah Bay NERR in South Carolina. CDMO ensures standardization and quality control of data collection, archives data from throughout the system and makes collected data available on the Internet. Across the system, the CDMO collects more than 13.5 million data points each year for the water quality monitoring program, and more than 34 million data points of weather information. Nutrient monitoring is now generating more than 31,000 data points per year.

“Partnerships are a crucial part of the NERRS mission, and SWMP is a key to numerous successful partnerships,” says Susan White, ERD’s research coordinator. “It is an essential part of NOAA’s burgeoning Integrated Ocean Observing System, which will coordinate numerous sources of data, such as the NOAA National Water Level Observation Network (also known as NWLON) and other observation systems to provide near real-time information relevant to climate, marine operations, living marine resources, ecosystem health, natural hazards and public health.”

SWMP data is disseminated through the Coastal Training Program, education and outreach programs to continue to improve coastal resource management.

The collected data have already provided an abundance of useful information for scientists and coastal decision makers. For example, SWMP data have shown:

• Seasonal variations in nitrate sources in the Elkhorn Slough NERR (California) are due to winter rains washing nutrients into the estuary from land, and out to sea;
• The impacts of a major phosphate spill in the Grand Bay NERR (Mississippi) (prior to Hurricane Katrina), which will help to measure recovery of the ecosystem over time;
• The relationship between weather and fish metabolism to help achieve optimal results for stocking red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) in the ACE Basin NERR (South Carolina);
• The removal of dikes in the South Slough NERR (Oregon) for a restoration project will not harm water quality as salt water re-occupies land that has been used for pasturage for the past century;
• Optimum temperature and salinity levels to help a school teacher in the Gulf Shores, Ala., to grow submerged aquatic vegetation in classroom tanks for later successful transplantation to Weeks Bay as part of a habitat restoration project;
• The effects on water quality of major storms, including Hurricanes Ivan and Isabel in Weeks Bay, Ala., and Chesapeake Bay, Va., respectively, and the time needed for water quality to return to pre-storm levels.

SWMP’s first 10 years have proved extremely useful to a variety of groups, but this has been just phase one of a three-phase monitoring program for the Reserve System.
Phase Two, biological monitoring, started in 2004, in an effort to characterize diversity in estuarine ecosystems. The current biological phase monitors emergent and submerged vegetation at selected reserves to demonstrate the protocols. The initial focus of the biomonitoring program is on estuarine vegetation, using surveys, remote sensing and GPS-based mapping, as well as fixed ground transects with permanent sampling stations. The protocols for monitoring have been developed by the NERRS research community based on accepted procedures. Currently, 16 NERRs are participating in biomonitoring, with a goal of funding the remaining reserves to begin monitoring in 2006.

Phase Three of the SWMP will focus on how changes in watershed land use practices relate to changes in coastal and estuarine habitats over time. Like Phase Two, this phase will rely on remote sensing imagery combined with ground-truthing to provide data. Currently, NERRS staff members are working on developing a common classification system to ensure that data can be collected and interpreted consistently at local, regional and national scales. The land use and habitat mapping also will provide baseline information and help with restoration efforts and recommendations for long-term best-use practices. Five NERRs are currently engaged in pilot studies of the classification scheme that will lead to refinement before this phase is fully implemented.

Thanks to SWMP, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System is helping NOAA to fulfill its mission to support science-based decision making that will protect and enhance coastal resources for the benefit of current and future generations.

Relevant Web Sites
NOAA Oceans and Coasts Service

NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve System

NOAA System-wide Monitoring Program

STEWARDSHIP OF OUR OCEANS AND COASTAL ZONE

NOAA’S NATIONAL ESTUARINE RESEARCH RESERVES: PROTECTING THE NATION’S ESTUARIES

Media Contact:
George Cathcart, Communications Specialist, Estuarine Reserves Division, (301)713-3155 ext. 141 or Ben Sherman, NOAA Ocean Service, (301) 713-3066 ext. 178