GRIIDC and the Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence (MBRACE)’s Partnership Continues

white wave effect
MBRACE researcher Chet Rakocinski (USM) and his graduate student Leah Morgan at the Restoration Summit outreach event.

MBRACE researcher Chet Rakocinski (USM) and his graduate student Leah Morgan at the Restoration Summit outreach event. Photo Credit: MBRACE website

GRIIDC is excited to announce that we are continuing our partnership with the Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence (MBRACE) program and look forward to working with their new and GRIIDC-seasoned researchers to meet their data management, storage, and sharing needs.

MBRACE is Mississippi’s Center of Excellence under the RESTORE Act’s Center of Excellence Research Grants Program. It is a consortium of Mississippi’s four research universities: Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, The University of Mississippi, and The University of Southern Mississippi — which also serves as the lead institution.

GRIIDC began our partnership with MBRACE in October of 2018. We are excited to start receiving new data from the important research MBRACE is conducting which will help to evaluate the condition of Mississippi’s coastal waters and oyster reef restoration projects.

MBRACE 1 Research

During the first round of funding, MBRACE researchers submitted data involving topics such as abiotic and biotic influences in current and historic distribution of oyster reefs (conductivity, dissolved oxygen, temperature, light intensity, and turbidity data); the effects of freshwater intrusion on oyster reefs; biosensors for measurements of oyster valve movement; modeled drifter simulations for oyster larval trajectory; and acoustic mapping of oyster reef restoration sites using multibeam sonar and phase bathymetric side scan sonar, to name a few. Their data can be found on the GRIIDC dataset monitoring page here.

MBRACE 2 Research

The new research planned for the Mississippi Gulf Coast during this next round of funding will produce data that shows the impacts of water quality on oyster development in order to inform oyster reef restoration and sustainability efforts; optical observation for oyster larvae; and the distribution of submarine groundwater discharge and its effect on Mississippi’s coastal water quality.

Training

In May, GRIIDC held a webinar to help MBRACE researchers become familiar with organizing and submitting data to our system. We encourage researchers to reach out to us with any questions or concerns regarding their data or the use of our system.

GRIIDC’s Future, Post-GoMRI

As our work with the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is winding down, we have been busy working on new partnerships with a number of other funding organizations including the Texas OneGulf Center of Excellence, Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program (FLRACEP), the National Academy of Sciences,Harte Research Institute, NOAA and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

We are excited to continue working with partners, such as MBRACE, who align with our mission of promoting data transparency and continual scientific discovery. We encourage other research institutions and individual researchers to store their data with us and welcome invitations to train more interested parties!