RCN-HERS: Research Coordination Network for Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis

Tropical cyclones are one of the most severe disturbance affecting social and ecological systems. These storms have huge impacts on both coastal ecosystems and the people that use and enjoy those natural resources. However, the impacts of each storm are unique in both the amount of damage and recovery time.

Furthermore, the frequency, intensity, and locations where tropical cyclones occur are expected to change. Tropical cyclones may become more common in some regions or more intense in others. This award will increase the understanding of what storm characteristics and the aspects of the affected coastal ecosystems result in the differential impacts among storms and rates of recovery.

In the Research Coordination Network for Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis (RCN-HERS) scientists from diverse disciplines and areas of expertise will contribute their collective knowledge and the wealth of existing data on storm impacts on coastal ecosystems to answer these questions. The data assembled through RCN-HERS will be publicly available for other research teams to use for future work and the project will build a collaborative network of researchers across disciplines of ecology, sociology, economics, and natural resource management.

The understanding gained from this project will help researchers predict the impacts of future storms and provide recommendations for managing coastal ecosystems for greater resilience. The RCN-HERS website will serve as a publicly accessible data warehouse and venue for sharing information about research activities, findings, and products. Findings from the project will also be disseminated to the public through local outreach presentations.

The Research Coordination Network for Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis will have the overarching goal of linking terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecologists with economists, sociologists, statisticians, modelers, and resource managers to develop a synthetic understanding of the factors governing the resistance and resilience of coastal ecosystems to tropical cyclones, as well as a coordinated approach to comparing among events and their impacts. Participants will meet through a series of workshops and webinars to bring together existing data on ecosystem responses to hurricanes.

Researchers will also work together to develop and implement a series of thematic approaches to analyzing and comprehensively synthesizing this existing data and information to build recommendations for future networked research to continue to advance ecological understanding of how hurricanes will impact coastal ecosystems in the future. Project activities will be centered around three workshops to address topics focused on understanding 1) interactions among antecedent conditions and storm characteristics on ecosystem responses, 2) roles of eco-evolutionary history, life history, and biodiversity on ecosystem responses, and 3) feedbacks among natural and social-economic systems that confer resistance and resilience to tropical cyclones.

Workshops will include lead-up webinars and digital planning meetings followed by in-person development of conceptual models, data analyses, and syntheses.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.