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Mission and Strategy

NCCOS’s mission is to provide coastal managers with scientific information and tools needed to balance society’s environmental, social, and economic goals.

NCCOS is passionate about supporting NOAA’s environmental and economic missions by providing valuable scientific information to its constituents. NCCOS’s fundamental principles are:

  • To deliver high–quality science in a timely and consistent manner using productive and strong partnerships.
  • To develop and maintain relevant research, long–term data collection and analyses, and forecasting capabilities in support of its customers, stakeholders, and partners.
  • To build capacity in the private, local, state, and tribal sectors by transferring technology and providing technical assistance and knowledge to its customers and partners.
  • To conduct the anticipatory science necessary to manage potential impacts of multiple stressors on coastal ecosystems.

Left alone, stressors change ecosystems. These force social and economic changes, both good and bad. NCCOS conducts and funds research to define these stressors and assess their consequences to ecosystem health and natural resource abundance.

Based upon these studies, NCCOS uses its science to forecast the anticipated effects of alternate management strategies on ecosystems. By using science to predict potential consequences of different actions, coastal managers have the information they need to make more informed decisions.

This series of steps connecting the status of ecosystems with the prediction of consequences from different management actions is called an Integrated Assessment.

Integrated Assessments, including the evaluation of the effectiveness of the management actions in meeting the stated goals, form the foundation of the NCCOS research strategy.

Vision

"Coastal stewardship decisions are guided by science to maximize societal benefits."

In NCCOS’s vision, science is the basis for sound coastal management decisions. Decisions made without scientific understanding often lead to unintended and undesirable results. NCCOS collects, synthesizes, and converts scientific research results into relevant data and products that managers can use to make more informed decisions. By providing relevant and timely information and creative approaches for examining environmental issues, NCCOS strengthens the linkage between sound science and management. By using NCCOS’s scientific information and tools, managers can balance the impacts of ecosystem stressors with social and economic goals. NCCOS is committed to implementing this vision by providing world–class science that is credible, relevant, and timely.

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