Meeting Future Marine Challenges: Charting the Course of NOAA´s National Ocean Service Science and Technology Enterprise towards Ecosystem Service and Stewardship

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the premier civilian ocean agency in the United States. To meet its mission, the agency addresses coastal and ocean challenges on a daily basis focusing on issues ranging from fish stock assessments to coastal inundation. NOAA relies upon a broad science and technology enterprise that produces the products and services necessary to make sound management decisions. Comprised of nine programmatic lines, NOAA´s national ocean service (NOS) has a wide-range set of inter-related challenges extending from management of estuaries and marine protected areas to operational oceanography and forecasting. In 2006, NOS established a Science and Technology Board to evaluate its diverse scientific enterprise and apply its wide range of skills and centuries of experience to the modern challenge of developing ecosystem based ocean and coastal services.