Grant will fund regional coastal initiatives

WEST LONG BRANCH — Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute (UCI) has received a $249,750 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to continue its coastal monitoring and policy initiative.

UCI Director Tony MacDonald said the Resilient Coastal Urban Community and Ecosystem (RESCUE) initiative focuses on three different project areas: coastal monitoring and mapping, regional ocean governance, and comprehensive community planning.

UCI operates 10 water-quality monitoring stations from Barnegat Bay to Keyport that were established through a previous grant. MacDonald said that this most recent grant would help the institute continue this as part of the program’s coastal monitoring and mapping endeavors.

“We need to have a better understanding of what the sources of pollution are, and without the monitoring stations, it’s hard to do that,” he said.

“They provide regular updates of the water quality, and then we can work on other issues like predicting potential fish-kills. If you have a better understanding, you might be able to predict when oxygen levels are low and track what the source is.”

The grant money will also help fund nearshore benthic (ocean floor) mapping of major estuaries along the shore, which, MacDonald said, no one else is doing.

“[These maps] can be used to identify potential habitats. Once you know what the nature of the bottom type is, you’ll know where the appropriate sites for shellfish restoration or aquatic vegetation that provides breeding grounds for fish are,” MacDonald said.

UCI also maps the actual shoreline, data that can be incorporated into sea-level-rise maps.

“We can get a really specific model and use that information to map any potential changes in the shoreline as a result of sealevel rise or other changes,” MacDonald said. The RESCUE initiative will also address regional ocean governance.

As part of a new federal policy focusing on regional approaches to ocean issues, New Jersey has joined a group of states in the mid-Atlantic region to discuss opportunities for cooperation.

“That’s the forum to start to talk about some of the major regional issues, like adaptation to climate change, placement of wind farms to be sure we’re placing them in the best locations, and identifying the need to make sure we understand where the fish habitats are,” MacDonald said.

He said that UCI would hold a variety of stakeholder roundtables to facilitate implementation at the local level.

The third facet of UCI’s RESCUE initiative involves community planning.

“New Jersey does a fairly good job at doing general land-use planning. They can maybe improve that, but they don’t have a

lot of information to incorporate into their plans about the potential impacts of sea-level rise that would be exacerbated by coastal storms,” MacDonald said.

“One thing that many scientists agree on is that whether you agree on the specific signs of climate change, we do know that the sea level is rising.

“If there is a storm, a hurricane or a major nor’easter, a small rise in sea level could cause a significant change in terms of the impact of flooding in communities during storms.”

MacDonald said the institute is working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and other partners to develop a coastal vulnerability assessment tool.

“This is a map that would actually visualize and show you the various scenarios based on sea-level-rise options,” he explained.

“We’re trying to develop that for communities so they can do better long-range planning based on various sea-level-rise scenarios.”

MacDonald said that Monmouth University and UCI uniquely approach coastal information and management.

Whereas other major universities like Rutgers focus on research, MacDonald said that his organization focuses on policy and implementation.

“We try to figure out where that niche is, the information that folks need but nobody else works on,” MacDonald said.