Members of the CRMRN network hike to a field site during the 2019 workshop in Juneau.

Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network

ACRC hosts the Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network, which works to understand the flow of water, nutrients, and carbon linking land and sea in the face of climate change.

ACRC is part of an international research network funded by the National Science Foundation to address information gaps, develop regional collaborations, and synthesize knowledge about water, carbon, and nutrient fluxes in the Pacific coastal temperate rainforest.

The Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network is working to measure the complex interactions between soils, streams, forests, and the ocean to determine how water, carbon, and other materials move through coastal watersheds to marine environments. Some of the goals of the research network include determining how climate change will affect the land-to-ocean flow of materials, what role the PCTR has in the global carbon cycle now and in the future, how important terrestrial nutrients are to nearshore marine ecosystem processes, and what might happen if these linkages change.

Answering these questions will help prepare local communities and industries for a warming and increasingly variable climate. Climate-driven changes in the movement of freshwater, carbon, and nutrients from coastal watersheds may impact downstream ecosystems and economies in both predictable and unanticipated ways. This research will inform decisions about ecosystem management, infrastructure, and policy to build resilience in coastal communities. It will also provide insight into coastal temperate rainforests worldwide, and inform research into climate-driven changes in other coastal margin areas.