Restore America's Estuaries is partnering with the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Training Program Initiative and the five research reserves in the Gulf Coast to promote blue carbon projects. Through workshops planned around the Gulf, the project team will facilitate discussions about current needs and opportunities related to blue carbon. The project team will also help to establish local working groups and provide technical assistance through a targeted Gulf Coast blue carbon training workshop.

From 2010 to 2018, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System’s Science Collaborative supported the Hudson River Sustainable Shorelines Project, which engages a regional research team to quantify the ecological functions and physical stresses on the full range of Hudson River, New York shorelines. This research is the basis for development of information and tools to identify the best settings and approaches for sustainable shoreline protection in the Hudson River Estuary.

This project will provide research staff members from the mid-Atlantic reserves with targeted tools, graphical support, and training to facilitate the use of reserve monitoring data. The project team will focus on deciphering trends in water quality parameters, which are related to management issues such as storm surge mitigation. Through workshops and the development of statistical applications, this project will increase capacity to distill monitoring data into a format that resource managers can use.

The Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve will work collaboratively with New York State agencies to capture what is known about nature-based shoreline stabilization approaches and other natural and nature-based features to reduce risk and enhance resilience. This will include joint review of existing policies, practices, and guidance; exploration of opportunities to enhance these programs and guidance; and recommendations for new or updated decision support frameworks.

The four national estuarine research reserves in New England will work together to share existing and develop new educational resources for the classroom teachers they work with.

New Curriculum: The Waquoit Bay Reserve recently developed a curriculum about blue carbon, "Bringing Wetlands to Market," which will be shared with the three other New England reserves (Wells, Great Bay, and Narragansett Bay). The reserves will use a similar process to develop localized teaching modules about climate change impacts.

Through data-collection, mapping, and modeling efforts, this project has increased clarity about marsh habitat change to inform mosquito control and coastal restoration efforts in New Jersey. Future modeling and marsh‐upland edge mapping suggest that the marsh‐upland is and will be a hotspot for change, and field sampling confirmed that these “new” habitats can serve as breeding areas for mosquitoes. The project team developed environmental DNA (eDNA) assays for the most common salt marsh mosquitoes in the Middle Atlantic United States.

Through the current project, the Chesapeake Bay-Virginia Reserve is building on the strengths of the previous years of CECB to extend the reach into Middlesex County, while developing an alumni program to support the program in Gloucester and Mathews. All three counties lie within a region experiencing relative rates of sea level rise greater than the global average. This science transfer project was funded by NOAA through the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative to promote the use of science. It did not produce any new data.

Education specialists from the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Virginia and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science's Marine Advisory Services are collaborating to create the Virginia Scientists and Educators Alliance. Modeled after a similar network formed in North Carolina, the alliance will connect educators and researchers through a variety of networking opportunities.

This project will 1) quantify pathogens, nutrients, and sediment delivery to the Rachel Carson Reserve; 2) create predictive models for shellfish and recreational waters in the North Carolina Reserve by using this information, along with decades of historical data; 3) engage stakeholders and end users to prioritize management options; and 4) engage coastal decision makers, community members, K-12 students, and teachers in hands-on education on stormwater runoff and its impacts.

In this project, National Estuarine Research Reserves in North and South Carolina worked to improve local understanding of climate change effects on southeastern salt marsh and provide decision makers with the information and skills they need to address these vulnerabilities. North Carolina Reserve staff members were trained in the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Coastal Habitats (CCVATCH) by their colleagues from North Inlet-Winyah Bay Reserve.