The funding is the third installment of a three-year, $1,015,756 grant from NOAA, as part of a national initiative to implement an integrated ocean observing system along the U.S. coastline.
The ultimate goal of the Mid-Atlantic effort, which is being led by the University of Delaware in partnership with the University of Maryland and Rutgers University, is to continuously collect ocean data from buoys, satellites and other sensors for a host of applications, from increasing the accuracy of coastal weather forecasts, to aiding search-and-rescue missions at sea, according to Carolyn Thoroughgood, vice provost for research and graduate studies at UD.
Thoroughgood is the principal investigator on the multi-institutional grant, along with co-investigators William Boicourt of the Center for Environmental Science at the University of Maryland; and Scott Glenn of the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
During the past two years, the academic partnership launched the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (MACOORA), a consortium of data providers and users from both the private and public sectors, including scientists, marine industries, environmental managers, educators, boaters and others. It is one of 11 regional associations that make up the nation's Integrated Coastal Ocean Observing System.
MACOORA's board of directors represent industries, academic institutions, resource management agencies and nongovernmental organizations from across the region, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Maritime Association of the Port of New York and New Jersey, Weatherflow Inc., Delaware River Basin Commission, Clean Ocean and Shore Trust (COAST), Old Dominion University, Columbia University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and University of Connecticut, in addition to the University of Maryland, Rutgers and UD.
David Chapman, a research scientist in the UD College of Marine and Earth Studies, is MACOORA's executive director.
“MACOORA's mission is to protect lives, livelihoods and quality of life through an understanding of marine and coastal environments,” Chapman said.
“We cover the coastal ocean between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras, which encompasses an expansive coastal shelf area, large estuaries and five subregions in nine states and the District of Columbia, where nearly a quarter of the nation's population lives,” he noted.
Over the past two years of the association's formation, annual meetings have been held, including a needs assessment workshop in Baltimore last year, co-sponsored by the Coastal States Organization. The event brought together coastal resource managers and emergency planners from Massachusetts to North Carolina to look specifically at coastal inundation issues.
“These groups indicated that they need very detailed data on storms and flooding that will tell them who they need to evacuate when, right down to the street level,” Chapman noted. “They also are concerned about planning for increased sea-level rise. We're working to bring that information to them.”
MACOORA also has been steadily building its data-collection capabilities over the past two years, Chapman said. High-frequency radar stations recently were installed on Cape Henlopen and Cape May, at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, with the assistance of researchers at Rutgers, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and the University of Connecticut.
“These radar beams give high-resolution maps of ocean and bay surface currents that enable the Coast Guard, for example, to fine-tune its helicopter search grid if a boater or fisherman is lost at sea,” Chapman said.
“You can use the models generated from high-frequency radar data to predict what it's going to be like in the water two hours from now, six hours from now, and so on,” Chapman added. “This information is not only critical to search-and-rescue missions, but it also can be used to predict rip currents or where oil spills will go.”
For more information on MACOORA, see [www.macoora.org].
Article by Tracey Bryant