ECSC Timeline

September 2001

The NOAA Environmental Cooperative Sciences Institute was established with Florida A&M University as the lead Instituteion

September 2004
The ECSC was cooperative agreement was renewed for two additional years.


November 2006

The ECSC was awarded $12.5 million in funds that will support education and research in environmental sciences.

NOAA Environmental Cooperative Science Center Partner Universities
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdThe ECSC was established in 2001 as part of NOAA’s Education Partnership Program to address ecological and coastal management issues at specific National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERR) and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. When viewed collectively, ECSC activities will impact much of the southeastern and mid-Atlantic coastal regions of the United Sates including the Mississippi, Florida and Texas Gulf coasts, South Florida, and the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. These sites were selected because of the critical nature of their coastal ecosystems; their proximity to ECSC member institutions; and because they presented ideal opportunities to expand existing research, education, and outreach activities involving member institutions.

The Primary Goals of the ECSC

1. Increase the number of scientists, particularly from under-represented minority groups in the environmental, coastal, and oceanic sciences;
2. Enhance the scientific understanding of human interactions with the coastal environment, particularly through integrated assessments in support of NOAA’s place-based management, to understand the response of coastal ecosystems, including humans, to human activities and stressors, and to develop tools to characterize, evaluate, and forecast critical attributes of ecosystem health;
3. Improve the scientific bases for coastal resource management through applications on systems of interest to NOAA; and
4. Facilitate community education and outreach relating to the function and significance of coastal ecosystems.

The ultimate goals of coastal management must be to ensure the sustainability and health of the coastal ecosystem and to ensure that the economy of the coastal area prospers. These goals have often been seen as contradictory and thus as incompatible. ECSC will direct significant research efforts to the structure of the economic and social systems of coastal communities and their relationships with the natural systems in order to overcome the conflicts between these two important components.