Our Global Estuary ...
...is a science-based, grassroots initiative addressing estuaries as critical local and global resources. As the world’s population and emerging regional economies continue to grow, so too do local and global pressures on the ecological health of estuaries. We aim to learn from independent yet synergistic research efforts, observations and simulations of many estuaries around the world, to bring the local, regional and global significance of their collective impact to light.
Our efforts are in response to the urgent need to anticipate and manage changes in estuaries — locally critical ecosystems whose aggregate services are essential for regional and global sustainability.
Our Global Estuary is:
- A broad-scope research, training, and social initiative to understand estuaries both as individual ecosystems and as a global ecosystem.
- An initiative developed organically by the scientific community in partnership with policy makers, resource managers, urban planners, social scientists, communities, and other stakeholders.
- A collaborative network of estuarine observation and prediction systems across the U.S. and the world, systematically generating and openly sharing high-resolution information from sensors and models.
- A catalyst for innovative development of the knowledge and systems necessary to respond regionally to the risks and opportunities of global environmental change, toward regional and global sustainability.
