Climate and Collaboration: environmental science and synthesis for a complex future
On a warm summer evening, a boisterous crowd gathered on the NCEAS terrace. Resident researchers, graduate students of the MEDS program, and NCEAS staff mingled with visiting fellows from the USGS Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral (CAP) Program. The CAP fellows had just given a roundtable presentation about how climate change impacts rivers and estuaries across the US. On the open air terrace, conversation flowed freely among residents, students, and researchers.
We welcome hundreds of researchers and collaborators to NCEAS each year, but the USGS CAP Fellows Program is a particularly unique and exciting synthesis initiative. NCEAS and USGS have partnered on this program since 2023 to engage and support cohorts of postdocs doing independent research and team synthesis science. Each postdoc spends two years at one of the USGS regional climate adaptation centers. NCEAS hosts each cohort twice a year for collaboration and national-scale synthesis on a thematic subject, with strategic skill-building in support of their research. The Future of Aquatic Flows is the theme for the 2022-2024 cohort, which includes biogeochemists, geographers, hydroclimatologists, and water quality scientists.
“Doing climate adaptation work is an interdisciplinary job,” said USGS biologist Jackson Valler, who helps coordinate the CAP Fellows Program. “To be able to do this job well, it takes understanding of lots of different disciplines of science and collaborating with people.” One goal of the program is to produce quality research about climate adaptation in the US. Another goal is to produce quality collaborators. Valler explained that postdocs come away from this experience not only with a tangible synthesis product, but also the skills necessary for a lifetime of scientific collaboration.
“It is really exciting to partner with USGS to expand the reach of our approach to building and supporting synthesis research experiences, and the exciting science that such teams produce,” noted NCEAS Director Ben Halpern.
Dr. Charlotte Lee, a hydrologist and member of the Aquatic Flows cohort, also values interdisciplinary collaboration. She welcomes complexity in her own research, knowing that the results will benefit from a holistic approach. Lee studies estuaries along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts - complex brackish zones where freshwater meets seawater.
These ecosystems are constantly changing with the tides, storms, and any upstream impacts. Depletion of freshwater streams can increase salinity. So can sea level rise, which pushes saltwater further upstream. Human-made barriers, like dams and tidal flood gates, further constrain and divide the flow of fresh and salty water throughout estuaries. Barriers also limit the movement of species that seek ideal salinity levels. Throw climate change into the mix and the system becomes even more complex.
But embracing complexity is necessary. “There seems to be an interest in moving towards managing ecosystems more holistically, rather than managing for a target species,” Lee said. She suggests overall estuarine health may improve if managers aim for optimal salinity for sensitive species, like oysters and seagrass. Oysters and seagrass serve foundational functions in estuaries - if they thrive, then other species may thrive as well.
As holistic management benefits ecosystems, so too does synthesis science benefit environmental science. By combining existing data and a variety of expertise, synthesis science reveals patterns that would otherwise be easy to miss.
“It has been really great to work on an interdisciplinary team,” said Lee. She and her cohort came to NCEAS this month to work on their national synthesis research project and discuss future collaboration beyond the CAP Fellowship term. Lee said of the process, “it's been both challenging and rewarding to learn how we can use a common language, how we can all bring our strengths together to make this project better than if any one of us did something by ourselves.”
NCEAS’ Learning Hub provided the cohort with technical training and professional development in “actionable science” (ways to make science useful to non-scientists), creativity in science, data management, team science, and science communication. “All of those things have profoundly impacted us as a cohort, so much so that we want to write a perspectives article about how valuable these trainings have been for us and how much we think that they could benefit other early career scientists,” said Lee.
NCEAS and USGS are eager to grow this partnership and continue producing quality climate adaptation science and, even more importantly, skilled collaborators to do the research. “This cohort has been great to work with,” said Halpern. “I can’t wait to see what the next cohort produces.” The next CAP Fellows cohort will focus on the theme of Future Species Range Shifts.