Conference: 2023 Coastal Ocean Dynamics: Coastal Ocean Physics and its Connections to Marine Ecosystems

The Gordon Research Conferences has a long history of providing an international forum for the

presentation and discussion of frontier research in a variety of science and engineering fields, including in coastal ocean dynamics. This project provides partial support for the Gordon

Research Conference (GRC) and Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Coastal Ocean Dynamics, to be held at the Bryant University on June 17-23, 2023. The financial support from NSF will be used to support the attendance of students, postdocs, early career researchers, invited speakers and discussion leaders, and to expand the demographic, professional and geographic diversity of participants.

Coastal oceans play a major role in the Earth’s system for reasons such as transforming nutrient-rich and often polluted freshwater discharge from land and dissipating large amounts of tidal energy. Understanding the processes in the coastal ocean offers great promise for linking scientific research to societal needs and to anthropogenic impact in the global ocean.

Studying the interconnectedness of the physical, geological, chemical, and biological aspects of the coastal oceans is fundamental to developing sound practices for the protection of the marine ecosystem and public health. The 2023 GRC and GRS on Coastal Ocean Dynamics strives to provide a platform to foster communication on interdisciplinary thinking and nurture rapport between senior researchers and students/junior researchers.

It is organized with a special emphasis on diversity and equity in gender balance, URM community representation and international participation to provide a better range of perspectives on the scientific topics. Besides the regular conference communication, there will be a structured “Power Hour” event focused specifically on different aspects diversity and equity.

The 2023 GRC and GRS on Coastal Ocean Dynamics will continue a long-standing record of informing and inspiring researchers that will ultimately comprise the technically skilled and creative research workforce required to meet future challenges in applied coastal ocean dynamics research.

The theme of the 2023 GRC on Coastal Ocean Dynamics is coastal ocean physics and its connections to marine ecosystems, and the associated GRS, a 2-day seminar before the GRC, targets professional development of students and early career scientists. The elected co-Chairs of the 2023 GRC Coastal Ocean Dynamics are Kristen Davis and Weifeng (Gordon) Zhang; the elected co-Vice Chairs are Melanie Fewings and Hans Burchard.

The co-Chairs and co-Vice Chairs together form the chairing committee. The elected chair of the 2023 GRS Coastal Ocean Dynamics is Elizabeth Brasseale. They have worked together to form the scientific program of the 2023 GRC and convened a Program Committee comprised of a broad spectrum of professional experiences.

The field of coastal physical oceanography has greatly advanced on a variety of fronts in recent years. Progress in observational methods, modeling techniques and model-observation integration have helped to improve our understanding of fundamental processes and interactions among different aspects of the coastal systems, and coastal ocean prediction.

The 2023 GRC Coastal Ocean Dynamics and the associated GRS have been designed to bring the community together to discuss a variety of topics, including nearshore and estuarine dynamics, shelf-ocean exchange, coastal ocean prediction and sea level change, high-latitude shelf dynamics, and climate impacts. The goal of the conference is to synthesize these recent advances, cultivate novel ideas, push the field of coastal oceanography forward.

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.