The University of Georgia Marine Institute (UGAMI) is a nearshore ecological and geological research station located on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia in the United States. This island lies between the Atlantic Ocean and a pristine salt marsh. A ferry takes passengers from Meridian (between Darien and Crescent) to Sapelo Island. The Island has fewer than 100 full-time residents. The Institute was created in 1953 and is currently a unit of the University of Georgia's Office of Research. The Institute is 280 miles southeast of the University of Georgia's main campus in Athens. UGAMI is world-renowned for its research on coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems.
UGAMI offers life-changing experiences[ peacock prose ] for undergraduate and graduate students. Approximately 600-700 university students train there each year. Students experience complete immersion in field-based academic studies, close mentorship by faculty who are experts in their fields of study, and engagement in a supportive community of scholars.
UGAMI does not have any stand-alone degree programs. However, it provides many training and research opportunities. UGAMI offers undergraduate classes, provides research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students, and is a field trip destination for university classes from all over the country. Classes visiting UGAMI on field trips usually stay for two to five days, but some stay longer. UGA offers full-credit courses that take place entirely at the Marine Institute. As many of these classes take place during the summer, they attract students from many colleges and universities. Undergraduates in UGAMI's residential courses live and work alongside the institute's faculty and graduate student researchers, while taking courses in topics such as marine sciences, ecology, and coastal geography. Graduate students from many different institutions conduct thesis research at UGAMI for periods ranging from a few days to a few years.
The field of saltmarsh ecology, and many of the foundational concepts in ecosystem ecology, were created at UGAMI by scientists such as Eugene Odum and John Teal. Today, UGAMI is still at the forefront of coastal and estuarine research.
The flagship research project at UGAMI is the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems-Long-Term Ecological Research Program (GCE LTER). The GCE LTER is part of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research Network, which consists of 28 research sites around North America and Antarctica. The GCE LTER was established by the National Science Foundation in 2000, and is the largest ecological research project on the Southeast Coast. The Georgia coast will experience many changes in the coming decades because of sea level rise, climate change, and human modification. GCE LTER is studying the estuary ecosystem to learn how it responds to these perturbations, and to better predict future changes to the coast. [1]
UGAMI is used for both long-term and short-term research projects, conducted by scientists from many institutions. The field research conducted at UGAMI results in the publication of approximately 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers each year.
Long-term researchers generally maintain semi-permanent housing, offices, and laboratories, and have students and technicians stationed at the Marine Institute for months at a time. Short-term researchers generally stay in the Marine Institute's apartments and dormitory, and use the visitor labs. Although most of the visiting scientists come from the U.S., UGAMI also hosts international researchers.
The greatest assets that UGAMI offers visiting scientists are:
The National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a network of 30 protected areas established by partnerships between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and coastal states. The reserves represent different biogeographic regions of the United States. The National Estuarine Research Reserve System protects more than 1.3 million acres of coastal and estuarine habitats for long-term research, water-quality monitoring, education, and coastal stewardship.
Eugene Pleasants Odum was an American biologist at the University of Georgia known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology. He and his brother Howard T. Odum wrote the popular ecology textbook, Fundamentals of Ecology (1953). The Odum School of Ecology is named in his honor.
Sapelo Island is a state-protected barrier island located in McIntosh County, Georgia. The island is accessible only by boat; the primary ferry comes from the Sapelo Island Visitors Center in McIntosh County, Georgia, a seven-mile (11 km), twenty-minute trip. It is the site of Hog Hammock, the last known Gullah community. Access to the island is restricted to residents, landowners, or guests thereof. Public access must be obtained by getting a permit issued by state tourism authorities.
The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network consists of a group of over 1800 scientists and students studying ecological processes over extended temporal and spatial scales. Twenty-eight LTER sites cover a diverse set of ecosystems. It is part of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER). The LTER Program was established in 1980 and is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Data from LTER sites is publicly available in the Environmental Data Initiative repository and findable through DataONE search.
The University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography (SkIO) is a marine science research and education institute located on Skidaway Island near Savannah, Georgia, USA. UGA Skidaway Institute faculty conduct oceanographic research across all the major marine science disciplines, and from the waters and marshes adjoining the campus to around the world. They teach, advise and mentor both undergraduate and graduate students on the UGA Skidaway Marine Science Campus and on the university’s main campus in Athens. Institute resources include state-of-the-art research laboratories and instrumentation, and the 92-foot research vessel Savannah.
The Oregon Institute of Marine Biology is the marine station of the University of Oregon. This 100-acre (0.40 km2) marine station is located in Charleston, Oregon at the mouth of Coos Bay. Currently, OIMB is home to several permanent faculty members and a number of graduate students. OIMB is a member of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML). In addition to graduate research, undergraduate classes are offered year round, including marine birds and mammals, estuarine biology, marine ecology, invertebrate zoology, molecular biology, biology of fishes, biological oceanography, and embryology.
The Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research (VCR/LTER) project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The VCR/LTER project's research activities focus on the mosaic of transitions and steady-state systems that comprise the barrier-island/lagoon/mainland landscape of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Research is conducted in mainland marshes, the lagoon system behind the barrier islands, and on the islands themselves, particularly Hog Island. The VCR/LTER began operation in 1987. It initially focused on geophysical controls on coastal ecosystems. In 1992-1994 it broadened that focus to address the concept of ecological state change, which was linked in 1994-2000 to relationships between free surfaces. More recent work (2000-2006), added a hypsometric perspective, which provides an alternate way of examining ecological patterns on the coastal landscape. It makes extensive use of the Virginia Coast Reserve of The Nature Conservancy.
The Odum School of Ecology is a school within the University of Georgia and the successor of the UGA Institute of Ecology. It is named after Eugene Odum, renowned UGA biologist, the father of ecosystem ecology, and the founder of the Institute.
The Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) is a private, nonprofit organization created in 1971. At that time, the members of two regionally based organizations, the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society (AERS) and the New England Estuarine Research Society (NEERS) recognized the need for a third estuarine organization that would address national estuarine and coastal issues. Today, CERF is a multidisciplinary federation of members and seven regionally-based Affiliate Societies dedicated to the understanding and wise stewardship of estuaries and coasts worldwide.
The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) is a science network of people, organisations and, most importantly observation platforms, that perform Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) in South Africa and its surrounding oceans. The SAEON is of global importance as an innovative approach in ecology to understand environmental change and to determine the impact of anthropogenic forces at multiple scales but it is a remarkably complex challenge to statistically discern between ubiquitous natural variability and exogenous forcing. The SAEON constitutes a national government response to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002) and is a component of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations). The SAEON has become the leader in environmental science and observation in South Africa, but has been criticised for taking a long time to establish, a situation which was inevitable in view of SAEON's multiple stakeholder corps. It has also been raised that the cost of replicated experimental treatments across SAEON sites will be high.
The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, commonly referred to as Andrews Forest, is located near Blue River, Oregon, United States, and is managed cooperatively by the United States Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and the Willamette National Forest. It was one of only 610 UNESCO International Biosphere Reserves, until being withdrawn from the program as of June 14, 2017, and a Long Term Ecological Research site. It is situated in the middle of the Western Cascades.
Deborah K. Steinberg is an American Antarctic biological oceanographer who works on interdisciplinary oceanographic research programs. Steinberg's research focuses on the role that zooplankton play in marine food webs and the global carbon cycle, and how these small drifting animals are affected by changes in climate.
Mary Ann Moran is a distinguished research professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens. She studies the role of bacteria in Earth's marine nutrient cycles, and is a leader in the fields of marine sciences and biogeochemistry. Her work is focused on how microbes interact with dissolved organic matter and the impact of microbial diversity on the global carbon and sulfur cycles. By defining the roles of diverse bacteria in the carbon and sulfur cycles, she connects the biogeochemical and organismal approaches in marine science.
The University of Georgia Small Satellite Research Laboratory (SSRL) is a research laboratory which builds CubeSats for Earth observation.
Sharon J. Hall is an ecosystem ecologist and associate professor at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on ecosystem ecology and the ways that human activity interacts with the environment.
Nancy B. Grimm is an American ecosystem ecologist and professor at Arizona State University. Grimm's substantial contributions to the understanding of urban and arid ecosystem biogeochemistry are recognized in her numerous awards. Grimm is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Anne E. Giblin is a marine biologist who researches the cycling of elements nitrogen, sulfur, iron and phosphorus. She is a Senior Scientist and Acting Director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Lab.
The University of Texas Marine Science Institute (UTMSI) is part of the University of Texas at Austin but is located in Port Aransas, Texas. Founded in 1941, UTMSI has 15 faculty members and 21 students. Notable alumni include Nancy Rabalais. Facilities on the main campus include wet and dry lab space, a wildlife rehabilitation "keep", dormitories, boat storage, and offices. UTMSI has received funding appropriated by the Texas State Legislature since 1971. In 2021, these funds totaled approximately $4.5 million.
Lawrence Richards Pomeroy was a zoologist, ecologist, and oceanographer.
Scott W. Nixon was an ecosystem ecologist whose research primarily focused on nitrogen and eutrophication in coastal and estuarine ecosystems. He was the first to clearly define coastal eutrophication. Nixon was a faculty member of the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography from 1969 until his death. Throughout his life, he also served important roles in many organizations and committees, including as the director of Rhode Island Sea Grant, editor-in-chief of Estuaries, and a member of the National Research Council's Ocean Studies Board.