Scientists have identified many of the sources and the general process of nutrient pollution in coastal waters, but much remains to be learned about both the causes and effects.  Some efforts are already underway to restore nutrient-degraded waters, ranging from small lagoons ot a large portion of the Gulf of Mexico.  However, an expanded research program is needed to help define more cost-effective, efficient, and socially acceptable prevention and mitigation strategies.  An integrated federal interagency research plan was developed to meet this need.  The plan, which was sponsored by NOAA, EPA, NSF, USDA, and NSF, was developed with strong input from the scientific community.  The priorities were drawn from research needs articulated in many publications, including the 2000 Clean Coastal Waters report from the NAS Committee on Causes and Management of Coastal Eutrophication.  These priorities were further developed at a workshop in 2002 in which 46 scientists with expertise in coastal, forested, and agricultural systems met at the NAS campus in Woods Hole, MA.  The draft report from that meeting was circulated electronically to an even broader group of scientists, and modified in response to feedback from over 100 of these.  Subsequently, this research plan was endorsed by the following professional societies that cumulatively have over 240,000 members:

• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Society of Agronomy
• American Society of Limnology & Oceanography
• Crop Science Society of America
• Ecological Society of America
• Estuarine Research Federation
• Soil Science Society of America

The plan includes research on both the consequences of nutrient pollution to coastal systems and on the sources of nutrient pollution in the landscape.  Priorities for research on responses of coastal nutrient pollution include:
 

• determine impacts of nutrient pollution on societal goals for coastal ecosystems, and relate societal goals to measurable targets for management.
• develop tools to assess sensitivity of coastal systems to nutrient pollution so that the most sensitive ecosystem can be the highest management priority.
• understand interactions among nutrient pollution, algae, fish, and shellfish, including he effects of overfishing on response to nutrients and the effects of nutrreint pollution on fisheries.
• evaluate changes in biogeochemical cycles during eutrophication and recovery that mitigate or exacerbate pollution effects.
• develop models to forecast coastal response to multiple stressors.

Priorities for research on controlling delivery of nutrients to coastal waters include:

• quantify inputs and fate of nutrient to watersheds under different land uses and management scenarios.
• analyze watershed-scale roles of groundwater, surfaces water, riparian zones, and wetlands as nutrient sinks, sources, and transformers.
• improve models of sources and fluxes of nutrients from the landscape under current and future conditions, and make models more accessible to managers.
• develop and evaluate approaches and technologies to best manage nutrient loads.
• determine effective policy approaches and methods to quantify costs, trade-off, and benefits of reducing nutrient pollution from the landscape.

The report can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.nccos.noaa.gov/documents/nutrientpollution.pdf