Through a 2020 science transfer project, the Lake Superior and Heʻeia reserves and partners brought renewed attention to reserve site profiles and supported the development of a modernized format that better aligns with and boosts the impact of reserve programs.

Each reserve within the National Estuarine Research Reserve System maintains a specific site profile that synthesizes knowledge about its physical and biological characteristics to guide research and monitoring activities.

Ecosystem service assessments are a top priority at many reserves in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

Through a 2020 catalyst project, the Heʻeia and Kachemak Bay Reserves worked to advance the equitable representation of cultural ecosystem services in estuary stewardship by providing practical information and opportunities for facilitated exchange.

Cultural ecosystem services (CES), one of four main categories of ecosystem services, are often described as the non-material benefits that humans receive from their interactions with the environment.

Poster: Drones can revolutionize research and monitoring…can’t they? (NERRS/NERRA Annual Meeting 2020)

Project Lead Brandon Puckett (North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve) gives an introduction to "Bridging the Gap between Quadrats and Satellites: Assessing Utility of Drone-based Imagery to Enhance Emergent Vegetation Biomonitoring," aka "Drone the SWMP," a catalyst project funded in

Monitoring plays a central role in detecting climate and anthropogenic stressors and associated changes in wetlands. There is a need for wetland monitoring programs to bridge the gap between ground-based surveys, which can miss important spatial heterogeneity and cause wetland disturbance, a

With funding from the NERRS Science Collaborative, scientists from 12 biogeographically diverse Reserves compared fluorescence measurements taken by the YSI EXO TAL sensor to extracted chlorophyll concentrations processed in the lab.

Standardized protocols for sensor-based chlorophyll monitoring are now available for use by staff around the system to implement high frequency chlorophyll monitoring at their reserves.