A. Background

In FY97 NOAA received ca. $4M in additional funding to augment its contribution to the interagency South Florida Ecosystem Restoration effort. Within the SFER effort, the Coastal Ocean Program (COP) has taken a lead role in regard to rigorously determining the causes of present changes in the coastal ecosystem and quantitatively predicting the consequences upon that ecosystem of upstream restoration activities. The underlying concept, adaptive environmental management, was articulated in the Integrated Science Plan developed by the Science Subgroup of the Management and Coordination Working Group of the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force (SFERTF). It is depicted in Figure 1. The formalized SFERTF structure that was developed over the last few years provides an explicit linkage between the research and management communities. Referring to Figure 1, NOAA's South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Prediction and Modeling (SFERPM) program will conduct empirical studies, develop and run models, assess risks and evaluate the ecological response of the South Florida coastal marine ecosystem . Evaluation of the ecological response will provide federal, state and regional restoration managers and policy-makers the most accurate and relevant technical information available. Note that it is through this evaluation (a synthesis and integration) process that technical information affects management and policy-making. The SFERPM program will build upon and markedly expand the ongoing NOAA Florida Bay Science Program and additionally initiate two new elements: Risk Assessment/Socioeconomic Analysis and Outreach/Community Education. The SFERPM program was conceptually developed by a team of regional NOAA (OAR, NMFS), academic and state (Florida Sea Grant) natural and social scientists with the approval and cooperation of our federal and state agency partners in the "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee and Science Subgroup. The elements of the program are designed to complement other components of the FY97 NOAA South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative (SFERI): the NMFS-lead Protection of Living Marine Sources and the NOS-lead Integrated Florida Bay and Florida Keys Ecosystem Monitoring programs. Moreover, a substantial fraction (>25%) of new FY97Coastal Ocean Program SFERI funds will contribute to the FKNMS Management Plan and the national Coral Reef Initiative by directly addressing the linkage between Florida Bay, the Florida Keys and the coral reef tracts of the FKNMS.

B. Goals

There is no question that scientifically well-informed management is necessary to maintain the quality of life in south Florida much less to accommodate any future development. The entire South Florida ecosystem, a unique interdependent landscape-seascape, is currently threatened.

The Interagency Florida Bay science program seeks to develop an understanding of the structure and function of Florida Bay in the context of the overall S. Florida Ecosystem and its restoration. Restoration of the Bay implies establishing and sustaining the natural diversity, abundance and behavior of the marine and estuarine flora and fauna. To date the principal factor controlling these parameters appears to be freshwater input. However, additional flow through the Everglades may not be sufficient. Timing, location, type and quality of input are all critical to Bay ecology. The challenge to the Bay research community, including NOAA, is deliver timely information to S. Florida Ecosystem Restoration managers. Although this will be politically difficult scientifically based Restoration is viewed as an iterative process through which management alternatives are developed and selected, the preferred alternative implemented, physical and biological responses assessed, results reported to managers and the process repeated over and over again as restoration proceeds. It will be through this adaptive process that the goals can be achieved.

Clearly, the impacts on Florida Bay of restoration activities upstream of Florida Bay are direct but may not be immediate. Achieving a predictive capability is the ultimate goal of the NOAA SFERPM program. Attaining a predictive capability implies better understanding of the physics and ecology of Florida Bay and the larger coastal ecosystem with which it is intimately connected. This improved understanding is the objective of the Interagency Florida Bay Science Program of which the NOAA SFERPM program is one component.

From a NOAA perspective predicting the downstream effects of Florida Bay restoration upon the sustainability of the coral reef ecosystems of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is critical. While this issue falls somewhat outside the scope of the Interagency Florida Bay Science Program it is notable that the geographic scope of both hydrodynamic and water quality Bay modeling efforts have now been expanded to include the FKNMS. In any case addressing this linkage is among the principal goals of the SFERPM program. As noted in the FKNMS Management Plan initially "little attention was given to the degradation of water quality in Florida Bay". As the plan was refined this became a major focus of the FKNMS Water Quality and Research and Monitoring Plans. This FKNMS priority is reflected in the goals and specific program elements of the NOAA SFERPM program.

C. Objectives

As with each participant in the interagency South Florida Ecosystem Restoration science effort, NOAA's institutional expertise and its specific environmental mandates (preserving the FKNMS and protecting coastal living resources) delimit NOAA's contributions to the interagency program and guide the substantive content of this Implementation Plan.

The South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Prediction and Modeling Program will have three basic components: Risk Assessment &;Socioeconomic Analysis; Community Education &;Outreach; and, Environmental Research &;Modeling. This represents a major expansion of scope beyond the present NOAA Florida Bay Research and Modeling program. This expansion requires a parallel augmentation to the present program management and technical advisory panels to obtain expertise both in risk assessment and socioeconomic research and in community education and outreach (see Appendix II). The roles and obligations of the management committee and advisory panel would continue to follow the present model as described below:

The NOAA Florida Bay Research and Modeling Program has followed the distributed project management approach pioneered within NOAA by the Coastal Ocean Program. This mechanism has proven highly effective in the management of multiple line organization, fundamentally interdisciplinary, federal-academic collaborative programs (e.g.- NECOP and SABRE). It has enabled managers to bridge fundamental institutional differences between various NOAA line organizations and academic institutions.

Representatives of two different NOAA line organizations, the local academic community and the EPA (our federal agency partner within the FKNMS) have agreed to serve on a four person Project Management Committee (PMC) for the SFERPM program. The PMC will be responsible both for continuing project management and for making specific funding decisions. It will continue to be guided in these tasks by a Standing Technical Advisory/Review Panel (TAP) consisting of federal, state and academic natural scientists and social scientists familiar both with the South Florida ecosystem and with the various SFERTF activities. To assure continued interagency coordination and cooperation, members of the PMC and TAP are continuing to serve upon both the Interagency "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee and the Science Subgroup of the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force Working Group. To assist the chair of the PMC a NOAA Corps Officer has been assigned to AOML. This individual will serve as the SFERPM program Executive Director.

Specific Environmental Research &;Modeling, Risk Assessment and Socioeconomic Analysis projects will be determined through an open, fully competitive, peer-review process. Announcements of availability of funds requesting planning letters will be mailed to academic institutions and NOAA/academic cooperative institutes, posted to the Interagency Florida Bay and Science Subgroup mailing lists and distributed through state and national Sea Grant offices. Based upon an evaluation of these planning letters by its TAP , the PMC will request more detailed work plans and budgets for a suitable subset. The criteria will again include both technical merit and program relevance. NOAA-academic collaborative projects will be encouraged but not required. The work plans received would again be evaluated by the PMC guided by the TAP. Where deemed necessary mail reviews will be solicited at this juncture. The results of these deliberations will then be reviewed and approved by the Interagency "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee to assure consistency with overall interagency program priorities before recommending funding to the COP.

As in prior years, all participating NOAA investigators will be required to provide substantial matching funds. Where possible supplementary funds will also be sought from other parts of NOAA as well as federal, regional or state collaborating agencies. The latter would be done through the Interagency "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee. As in the past two years these efforts have achieved modest success and have significantly augmented what might have been achieved with COP funding alone.

Day to day project management within NOAA line offices will be coordinated with and implemented through separate institutional management structures as has been the case in previous COP programs. Funding for academic participants will be distributed through cooperating state Sea Grant Offices or cooperative university/NOAA institutions.

In partial contrast to the above procedures, Education and Outreach activities will be conducted by and through Florida Sea Grant. They will be required to submit a detailed work plan to the PMC for approval by the PMC (and TAP). This work plan would then have to be reviewed and explicitly approved by the Interagency "Florida Bay" Program Management Committee. Moreover as with all other SFER public outreach and education efforts, the Florida Sea Grant activities on behalf of the Interagency PMC program would have to fully integrated through and approved by the Interagency Working Group's, Public Information and Education Subgroup.