- Success Stories
- Environmental Resource Assessment & Management
Expanding Our Offshore Wind Team
We’ve recently added several staff to bolster the offshore wind team at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. With this full team of 13, our employee owners are able to provide more focused support in their areas of expertise, including mapping and spatial modeling, data collection, communications, project management, and partner engagement. Through this work, the team develops regional ecosystem-wide spatial models to inform siting of ocean use sectors, environmental review, and permitting, which provides guidance to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on suitable locations for offshore wind siting.
Sustainable coastal planning and development increases resiliency, creates jobs, reduces reliance on unsustainable imports, supports renewable energy, and grows the domestic Blue Economy. Check out the NCCOS Coastal & Marine Planning and Offshore Wind Energy spatial planning webpages to learn more.
This team is now providing spatial planning support in all U.S. ocean regions and was recently instrumental in BOEM designating two Wind Energy Areas in the Gulf of Mexico. As offshore wind continues to expand throughout U.S. waters, this team will continue to collaborate with BOEM to support the identification of suitable locations for renewable energy. Future work is slated for the U.S. Central Atlantic, Gulf of Maine, Oregon, and more to come!
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An Approach to Assessing Laboratory Space
CSS employee owners were part of a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health who developed an approach to evaluating new laboratory space to determine if the space will fit operational needs. This concept, titled The BaseLINE Approach, combines traditional safety processes with additional safety and environmental factors to assess before operations begin.…
Developing a Database for Ecosystem Service Models
CSS scientists have been major developers and contributors to the online U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s EcoService Models Library (ESML) database since its inception in 2012. The ESML database contains detailed but concise descriptions of ecosystem service models to facilitate the selection of models by ecosystem scientists for a variety of management and research applications. The…
Studying Corals for Future Protection and Restoration
Coral reefs are under threat from warming waters, disease, degraded water quality, and other stressors. Several shallow water coral species are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Our team of coral scientists on contract with NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science are studying coral reproduction, and genetics, and the environmental factors that…