# Coastal Observatory Design — purpose and scope

The Coastal Critical Zone Observatory (CCZO) is being scoped under
**NSF Mid-scale R1 Infrastructure Design (24-598)**, with a
pre-proposal due **September 1, 2026** and a full proposal due
**February 8, 2027**. cod-kmap is the operational dataset, map, and
dashboards supporting the proposal.

## Why this matters

- **More than 40 % of Americans live in coastal counties.**
- **About 50 % of the US economy is based in coastal areas.**
- Coastal natural, managed, and socio-economic systems carry
  complex, interacting stresses.
- **There is currently no NSF coastal observatory in the United
  States**, even though coastal ecosystems underpin a large share
  of the national economy.

## What "coastal critical zone" means

The CCZO scope is the *coupled land–water–human interface* —
including terrestrial and built areas near coasts, river deltas,
tidal inlands, and estuaries.

## Proposal pillars

### 1. Resolve competing coastal research interests

- Integrate research and agency programmes that are otherwise
  fragmented.
- Demonstrate value-added to existing networks rather than
  duplicating them.
- Earlier attempts at a coastal observatory have failed when the
  design centred on a single site rather than a network.

### 2. AI-embedded design framework

- Treat cyberinfrastructure and generative AI as **core
  infrastructure from the start**, not as a bolt-on.
- Use multimodal AI to identify spatial, temporal, and data gaps
  across the existing coastal observing landscape.
- Use AI-assisted prototyping to guide observatory design and
  reduce proposal risk.

### 3. Co-development of coastal ecosystem function and social dimensions

- Coastal biogeochemistry, saltwater intrusion, sea-level rise, wind
  effects, flooding, ecosystem function.
- Ecosystem services, local-to-regional economies and dependencies,
  policy frameworks for decision-making.

### 4. Co-design workforce development

- Science and research management is multifaceted and supports
  careers across many fields, not only research science.
- Science operations need trained personnel.
- AI skills are needed for data management.
- An infrastructure-operations curriculum is part of the design.

## The AI advantage

- Build on prior workshops, position papers, and existing capabilities
  rather than starting from scratch.
- Include existing networks and agency sites and data products.
- Continental-scale, expert-informed, AI-based design — to better
  understand changing coastal processes.
- Inclusion of the social dimension is a first-class design criterion,
  not an afterthought.
- The workforce pipeline targets cutting-edge skill sets, including
  AI for science technicians.
- An experienced team is in place, with a long history of NSF
  infrastructure scoping.

## Team

- **Skip Van Bloem** — Clemson University — `skipvb@clemson.edu`
- **Allison Myers-Pigg** — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory —
  `allison.myers-pigg@pnnl.gov`
- **Tyson Swetnam** — University of Arizona — `tswetnam@arizona.edu`
- **Hank Loescher** — Battelle — `hloescher@battelleecology.org`

The effort builds on a 2019 Clemson Baruch Institute Coastal
Workshop, a 2022 follow-up meeting, and a 2024 pre-proposal in which
a draft conceptual framework for a coastal observatory was
developed. Workshop attendance has included NSF, NOAA NERRS,
Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard, Sea Grant, USGCRP IWG,
and a broad range of universities.

A core science team of more than 40 participants and a formal
project-management team of more than 10 have met to identify the
major scientific and operational needs. The team has working
relationships with the NSF Large Facility Office, the R1 Community
of Interest, and the G7 Group of Senior Advisors for Research
Infrastructure, and uses a state-of-the-art systems-engineering
approach grounded in a dynamic-model framework.

## Aligned with national priorities

- U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2024 — *Our Changing
  Planet: The U.S. Global Change Research Program for Fiscal Year
  2024*
- **Fifth National Climate Assessment**, 2023
- NAS report — *Next Generation of Earth Systems Science*, 2021
- *Catalyzing Opportunities for Research in the Earth Sciences
  (CORES): Decadal Survey*, 2020
- *Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-
  Human Coastal System*, 2018

## Grand Challenge questions

These four questions guide the observatory design. Full text and
underlying assumptions are available on request.

- **GC1 — Challenging scientific and economic theory.** How do
  scientific and economic theory and observations inform our
  understanding of coastal socio-ecological systems? How can that
  understanding be challenged and improved by predictive modelling
  capability? How can generative AI inform new observations or
  required data for improved understanding of the coastal critical
  zone? How do we prepare the future workforce to manage the
  complexity of coupled socio-ecological systems and rapidly
  evolving technical capability?
- **GC2 — Societal responses.** How do changes in coastal ecosystem
  functions affect coastal economies? How do they scale from local
  to regional? Which markets and commodities are affected and how?
  How is this considered in policy and jurisprudence?
- **GC3 — Coastal vulnerability.** How stable, resilient, and
  resistant are coastal ecosystem processes under natural and
  anthropogenic change? How do we determine tipping points that
  would shift a coastal ecosystem to a different state? Which
  coastal processes are particularly vulnerable to rapid or
  sustained change, and how do they scale?
- **GC4 — Uncertainties in coastal ecosystem processes.** How will
  US coastal ecosystems respond to natural- and human-induced
  changes — saltwater intrusion, extreme events, intensifying
  storms, inland flooding — across spatial and temporal scales? How
  do feedbacks in coastal processes interact with extreme events?
  How do those feedbacks vary with ecological context, scale, and
  time?

## How cod-kmap supports the proposal

cod-kmap operationalises the proposal's "Multimodal AI identifies
spatial, temporal, and data gaps" claim. Each of the proposal's
themes is reflected directly in the application:

| Proposal theme | cod-kmap support |
|---|---|
| Inclusion of existing networks and agency sites | The Map and Browse tabs catalogue 200+ facilities across 30+ networks (LTER, NERRS, NMS, NEP, IOOS, Sea Grant, NPS coastal, and more) with full metadata. |
| Continental-scale design | The Network knowledge map shows research-area cartograms across all US coastal facilities plus Latin American and Caribbean partners — visualising continent-scale coverage at a glance. |
| Spatial, temporal, and data gaps | The Stats dashboards expose per-research-area coverage by country, by overlay region, and by facility type. The site-suitability roadmap describes the next-phase MEOW + Köppen + GBIF ingestion that will enable a *top-N candidate new sites* ranking. |
| Inclusion of a social dimension | Funding records cover federal, state, and non-profit sources per facility, with Form-990 totals for the non-profit and foundation organisations in the dataset. |
| Build on prior workshops and capabilities | The researcher directory includes per-person publication and citation metrics with ORCID and OpenAlex linkage. A unified person registry resolves the project team, facility staff and the field-wide scholar roster onto one persistent identifier each, so an existing collaboration between the team and the wider community is visible rather than implied. Google Scholar linkage is a stated intent, not a delivered one — the free sources for it are effectively empty. |
| Demonstrate value-added to other networks | Cross-area edges in the Network view make interdisciplinary collaboration visible — the "where are the inter-network connections worth funding?" question. |

## What's still missing

To fully match the MSI handout, cod-kmap still needs:

- **Geographic and climatic strata** — MEOW marine ecoregions,
  Köppen-Geiger climate zones, EEZ boundaries (described in the
  Suitability Roadmap doc).
- **Human-influence and biodiversity proxies** — GHSL population,
  WCMC marine pressures, GBIF and OBIS species richness.
- **Site-suitability ranking** — H3 hex tiling plus a composite
  score, exposing "top-25 candidate new observatory sites per
  research area."
- **Workforce and curriculum view** — capture training programmes,
  REUs, NRTs, postdoc cohorts at each facility, supporting the
  Co-Design Workforce Development pillar.
- **Time-series funding view** — already structured per fiscal year
  in `funding_events`; needs a chart UI surfacing trends per
  facility × funder × year.

These items live on the public roadmap so the proposal narrative
and the operational tool stay in sync as work progresses.