Research Reserves Deliver Dependable Data for Our Changing Coasts

The Takeaway: In the National Estuarine Research Reserves, a decades-long monitoring program provides valuable information for communities working to safeguard their coastal resources.

Two people in life jackets service a monitoring station on the water.
ACE Basin Reserve biologists Grace Lewis and Makayla Stewart-Morrow prepare to perform routine equipment swaps at a System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) station on a tidal creek. Credit: Kaitlyn Dirr/ACE Basin Reserve.
Get the Data: The System-Wide Monitoring Program provides long-term data on water quality, weather, biological communities, habitat, land use, and land cover. Standardized instrumentation and data collection protocols deliver real-time data from each of the reserve sites that are uniform, consistent, and reliable. Data are available from the Centralized Data Management Office.

Spread across the nation’s 30 National Estuarine Research Reserves, a network of monitoring stations takes measurements of water quality and weather conditions every 15 minutes. These stations are part of a monitoring program—known as the System-Wide Monitoring Program, or SWMP (pronounced “swamp”)—that keeps tabs on the health of the country’s coasts.

All together, nearly 300 SWMP stations take more than 48 million readings each year, with data spanning two decades. As communities across the country grapple with accelerating coastal change, this publicly available data trove provides critical information on both real-time conditions and long-term trends.

Through the monitoring program, the reserves put high-quality data in the hands of those directly facing coastal challenges like flooding, fisheries management, hurricane preparedness and recovery, and more.

Protecting coastal communities and businesses

A residential street covered with floodwater and debris.
A 2024 winter storm caused widespread coastal flooding in Maine. Credit: Wells Reserve.

  • A team from the Wells Reserve in Maine created a web application using SWMP data to help local residents better understand the potential impacts of flooding and storm surge on their homes and businesses. The Wells Reserve Tide Tracker displays NOAA tide gauge and reserve data in nearly real-time, providing reliable water level information and predictions in an accessible format. Other coastal communities can recreate the app by combining data from their nearest research reserve and NOAA tide gauges.

  • On New York’s bustling Hudson River, a Hudson River Reserve SWMP station is helping make navigation safer. The station transmits real-time weather and water level parameters that commercial and recreational mariners rely on to avoid groundings and collisions. By establishing the station as part of the Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS), the reserve and partners are filling a critical data gap in the region to keep commerce flowing safely—even in the aftermath of extreme weather events.

Responding to disasters

A tower with sensors sits on the shoreline of the Hudson River in New York, with a bridge and trees in the background.
The new station at Turkey Point expands water level monitoring to include the tidally influenced portion of the Hudson River. Credit: Sarah Fernald/New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

  • Researchers used SWMP data from Florida’s Apalachicola Reserve to develop and test an algorithm that detects ecosystem disturbance and recovery periods, like those following hurricanes. This model provides a valuable tool for understanding how quickly water quality, fisheries, and coastal economies might recover after extreme events.

  • Real-time data from the Grand Bay Reserve in Mississippi alerted managers to chemical spills from a nearby fertilizer factory, providing critical information for disaster response and environmental remediation.

Supporting thriving fisheries

A close-up of a live shrimp held in a person’s hand.
Credit: ACE Basin Reserve.

  • Fishery managers in South Carolina use water temperature data to determine the right time to open the shrimp fishery. Research using SWMP data from the ACE Basin Reserve identified the winter temperature threshold that leads to shrimp kills, impacting the spring spawning stock. This information helps support fishery management decisions to optimize harvests.

  • Researchers used data from the Great Bay Reserve in New Hampshire to develop a model for predicting bacteria concentrations in oysters. The bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the leading cause of seafood-borne illness. The model provided more accurate forecasts, helping fishery managers and public health officials understand Vibrio risks for the local harvest area.

Tracking coastal change

  • Long-term temperature data from 54 stations at 20 reserves across the country helped shed light on the drivers of marine heatwaves impacting estuaries. Researchers in Virginia found that marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent on the East Coast, while the West Coast has not seen the same increase. Understanding these trends will help planning efforts to better manage estuary resources for the future.

Educating future scientists

Graduate students collaborated with participating reserves to help analyze the abundance of data produced through the SWMP.
A group of graduate students look at maps in a conference room.
  • Wisconsin’s Lake Superior Reserve teamed up with seven other reserves to answer their pressing research questions while supporting the next generation of scientists through a graduate level course at the University of Wisconsin. The students matched with participating reserves to address real-world coastal management challenges, like the impact of a wastewater treatment plant on Chesapeake Bay, Maryland water quality.

The National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a network of 30 sites protected for long-term research, ecosystem monitoring, education, and coastal stewardship. Visit the research reserves homepage to learn more. (2025)

Additional Resources:

Partners: NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, National Estuarine Research Reserve System, National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative, National Estuarine Research Reserve Association

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