Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Coastal OceAn SusTainability in Changing Climate

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities.

It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.

Working together in this Collaborative Research Action, the partner agencies have provided support to foster global transdisciplinary research teams to address critical issues in ocean sustainability including, conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. This complex challenge required that the projects utilized integrated, transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches and bring together natural and social sciences as well as policymakers, resource managers, industries, citizens and other societal partners.

This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to increase our knowledge of the complex linkages and pathways needed to accelerate sustainable use of oceans and minimize the effects from global change.

The project centers on the sustainability of the coastal ocean under the impacts of ongoing and projected climate variability and change. The project addresses the various impacts of climate change and increased human activity on coastal zones by integrating the natural and social domains of the coastal ocean and tracking how changes will affect the use and the infrastructure of today and in the future.

The project will focus on coastal areas where human impact on marine ecosystems is relatively high, sea level varies, and there are increasing impacts of waves and surges on coastal erosion and intensified coastal hydrological cycles. This integrated, transdisciplinary research approach will ensure the development of society-relevant recommendations and environmentally friendly business solutions for ocean coastal areas.

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.