See Disclaimer.
In the 1990’s, the idea began to emerge that it was possible—in fact, essential—to manage and study our coasts and estuaries with the power of real-time ocean observations coupled with increasingly faster and more reliable computer models.
Hundreds of researchers, working across tens of universities and with numerous Tribal, federal, state and local agencies, have since made that vision a reality. Science for and driven by society, at its most powerful. The program created goes by the name of US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and operates under funding of NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Now retired, I am proud to have been one of those researchers. My team’s focus was on the Columbia River estuary and plume. Dividing Oregon and Washington, the estuary extends upstream to the first dam in the river, the historical Bonneville Dam. The plume extends south to California or north to British Columbia, depending on the wind regime. Together, river, estuary and plume are a force of nature and an invaluable resource—across navigation, hydropower, fisheries, tourism, and so much more—for the Pacific Northwest and country.
The real-time and long-term observational and modeling power of IOOS has radically transformed how the Columbia River is managed and studied, and how its populations and ecosystems are protected—to the benefit of all. The footprint of impact extends to hydropower management, port operations and channel deepening, salmon and ecosystem recovery, tsunami and storm surge mitigation, search and rescue operations, and much more. But the Columbia River is just one of the many and very diverse coastal systems that, in aggregate, contribute disproportionately to the economy ($476.2 billion annually) and well-being of our country.
IOOS covers the entire US coastline, including Alaska, the Great Lakes, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands and territories. This is a program that has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress. And it does so because it is highly valued by a broad range of coastal stakeholders, from fishers and shellfish growers to the shipping and tourist industry, and to marine safety responders, coastal hazard managers and port authorities. State by state and nationwide, the value of IOOS has far exceeded the federal investment.
The President’s budget proposes to cut deeply into the budget of NOAA. Should Congress go along with this plan, IOOS would be strongly affected—causing devastating harm to the US coastal economy, the safety of our coastal populations, and the health of our ecosystems and fisheries. (See, as an example, the ‘funding at risk’ alert for NANOOS, the Pacific Northwest arm of IOOS).
Other critically important programs within NOAA—weather forecasting, for example—would also be affected, compounding the self-inflicted damage to economy and people’s safety and well-being.
Congress should retain its Constitutionally mandated power of the purse and reject cuts that are contrary to the national interest. NOAA’s budget—IOOS explicitly included—should be protected.
NOAA is, of course, not alone. Across each and all federal agencies and programs–from the National Science Foundation to the National institutes of Health, and more,–any budget allocations and cuts should be the result of careful strategic analysis, not the result of grievances, whims or misguided attempts to shave dollars with no or counterproductive rationale.
— Antonio Baptista
Disclaimer: A retired oceanographer, the author was director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction. He was also principal Investigator of one of the NOAA-funded pilot projects that preceded IOOS. And he participated in the leadership of NANOOS, a Pacific Northwest-focused Regional Association of IOOS.
Outside the box 