Narragansett Bay Estuary Program Research Plan for 2024-2034

The Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (NBEP) was founded to understand how the Narragansett Bay regional estuaries and watersheds change with time, climate, disturbance, and management. NBEP continues to strive for this understanding. This Research Plan will direct limited funds, capacity, and time to priority, gap-filling local research and create a pipeline to new and exciting research and projects which will help address the complex questions impacting the region’s water, wildlife, and quality of life. Research may be driven by academic questions, applied research/questions, or management information need, or concerns raised by local communities. The Plan has two components: (1) response to the Science Advisory Committee priorities to understand ecosystem change and improve freshwater and saltwater habitat, and (2) complement NBEP’s newest Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP), Vision 2034, and engage in opportunistic science. The plan is intended to be dynamic and allow NBEP to take advantage of opportunities to align with and leverage other investment in research.

In Spring 2023, the NBEP Science Advisory Committee (SAC) prioritized the following research activities to understand ecosystem change and improve freshwater and saltwater habitat: (1) synthesize existing data; (2) collect baseline and new data; (3) analysis and modeling; (4) share information widely.

In response, NBEP proposes the Coastal Urban Waters Research Collaborative. This collaboration, comprised of SAC members, researchers, managers, and community experts, will focus on the region’s coastal urban subwatersheds (HUC12) (Providence, Fall River, and Westerly-Stonington). These urban areas are located at the mouths of the region’s three major rivers., Two of the areas constitute the major urban regions of Providence and Fall River that have been subject to intensive management actions to address the intersectional environmental impacts of high population densities and pollution burdens, climate change, and degraded or absent natural landscapes, and are home to many of our region’s underserved communities. The third area, Westerly, has a much smaller urbanized area but shares similar management challenges albeit on a different scale. Understanding ecosystem change in these areas provides insights for managing the resources of Narragansett Bay, Mount Hope Bay, the Sakonnet River, and Little Narragansett Bay and help inform opportunities for improving the habitats surrounding those waters to ensure resilience against climate change. These opportunities will also address the inequities that burden our underserved communities. NBEP chose to limit the geography of its Research Plan to make strategic use of its limited research funds and provide its partners with an opportunity to collaborate on interdisciplinary research to fully understand the human-ecosystem dynamic in select urban estuarine systems.

As a second area of focus, the Research Plan will advance work on environmental indicators. The Vision 2034 development process identified the need for numeric targets and goals to track action completion. In response, NBEP will use this Research Plan to work with partners to identify those targets and goals, and synthesize or collect the data necessary to fully define those targets. The Program also needs to remain flexible to the changing needs of the region, and therefore may also elect to participate in or support research opportunities that emerge and which align NBEP research priorities.

NBEP will devote approximately 50% of its research budget (averages $50-$100k annually) to meeting the mission of the Research Plan and 50% for Vision 2034 target development and opportunistic science. These funds will be released through Requests for Proposals (RFPs), direct awards, and contracts. NBEP will reorganize the Science Advisory Committee (SAC) to include a core group of experts (researchers, managers, and community) in urban watershed research and expand its membership to bring in diverse experts to drive research questions. The SAC will help craft RFPs and prioritize/guide specific research questions that the program can directly award. The Program will also use its Working Groups to continue topical discussions (such as salt marsh or fishermen’s ecological knowledge) and create more working groups as appropriate. NBEP anticipates these experts and partners will respond to the RFPs and be among the experts contacted for direct awards and contracts. The science generated by this Research Plan will be shared widely in multiple forums to ensure that it is high-quality, available to the public, and integrated into NBEP’s periodic reporting (Status and Trends). NBEP will encourage all partners to publish their work and take ownership of their contributions. The direction and details of the Research Plan may change as Vision 2034 develops and will be finalized when Vision 2034 is finalized.