Media are invited to a signing ceremony marking the launch of the new Mid-Atlantic Coastal Resiliency Institute (MACRI) at 2:15 p.m., Monday, June 9, in Bldg. E-100, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
MACRI is a multi-state, multi-disciplinary partnership dedicated to integrated climate change research with the goal of helping local and regional leaders make coastal communities and habitats more resilient through scaled science and research informing public policy.
“To understand the impact of climate change elements such as sea level rise, extreme weather, and degraded coastal ecosystems, you must go where the signal is the strongest,” said Caroline Massey, Assistant Director for Management Operations at NASA Wallops. “The Mid-Atlantic is unique with both protected, undeveloped ecological coastline as well as intense coastal development, which makes it a perfect living laboratory to understand the natural and human-induced effects at the shore.”
According to Massey, MACRI will be the platform to combine and leverage the capabilities of participating institutions to provide an unprecedented integration of science and its applications to understand, predict, and integrate resilience into local, state, and regional policy planning for both human and natural coastal communities.
Core MACRI team members comprising the new endeavor are:
– NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center – Greenbelt Campus, Wallops Flight Facility, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science: providing world class climate expertise along with access to climate change data, analysis, and modeling
– U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: providing expertise in natural resource management and environmental education as well as research to enhance biological planning and conservation design to inform land protecting strategies
– U.S. Geologic Survey: the Nation’s largest water, earth, biological science and civilian mapping agency
– Chincoteague Bay Field Station of the Marine Science Consortium (includes 13 Pennsylvania Colleges): providing multidisciplinary, multiage educational programs along with key research facilities and equipment
– College of William and Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science: home to a state-of-the-art Mid-Atlantic seawater laboratory and marine culture facilities with high-tech sonar mapping tools, high-resolution 3D hydrodynamic modeling, coastal vulnerability and risk assessment modeling
– University of Virginia, Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research Program: a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from eight institutions studying coastal barrier systems, including islands, lagoons, marshes and watersheds
– University of Maryland, College Park: home to the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center contributing established regional earth system modeling in areas such as climate, hydrology, air quality, water quality, and agriculture. Furthermore, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) brings together different disciplines and stakeholders to increase knowledge on the complex interactions between human and ecological systems
– University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment: as a leader in the economics, science, and policy of the coastal ocean provides: a multi-disciplinary perspective on earth, ocean, and environment systems; specific expertise in environmental monitoring and forecasting related to coastal hazards and resilience; and access to land- and sea-based monitoring tools and data in Delaware and extending into the surrounding region
– University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment: as a leader in the economics, science, and policy of the coastal ocean provides: a multi-disciplinary perspective on earth, ocean, and environment systems; specific expertise in environmental monitoring and forecasting related to coastal hazards and resilience; and access to land- and sea-based monitoring tools and data in Delaware and extending into the surrounding region
– University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment: as a leader in the economics, science, and policy of the coastal ocean provides: a multi-disciplinary perspective on earth, ocean, and environment systems; specific expertise in environmental monitoring and forecasting related to coastal hazards and resilience; and access to land- and sea-based monitoring tools and data in Delaware and extending into the surrounding region
– The Nature Conservancy: broad global reach and access to diverse and extensive conservation networks and resources with expertise in land protection, habitat restoration, conservation science, ecological monitoring, public policy, government relations, and strategic planning
