Keeping Watch on a Changing Coast | Fresh & Salty

If there’s one thing we can count on along our dynamic coasts, it’s change. With rising seas, warming waters, and extreme storms reshaping our shores, now more than ever, coastal communities need reliable data to make sense of the changes they can see, and those they can’t. In this episode, Reserve scientists Dr. Jude Apple (Padilla Bay) and Dr. Kari St. Laurent (Delaware) take host Peter Ravella on a tour of the NERRS System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP)—the only national network to integrate the needs of coastal management with standardized, site-based monitoring. This capacity for long-term monitoring across a national system allows Reserves to track early warning signals and inform proactive strategies for climate change adaptation and other coastal resource management priorities.