New coastal research center opens on Eastern Shore

A dedication ceremony for U.Va.’s new Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center will be held at the facility on the Eastern Shore on Saturday, Aug. 26 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The center is the new home base for the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project conducted by U.Va. environmental scientists. The new state-of-the-art facility is located in the town of Oyster, Va., about 15 miles north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, on 42 acres and includes more than 9,400 square feet of dry and wet lab space, a 5,800-square-foot residence building that can accommodate 30 people, and a dock for its fleet of four shallow water research vessels.

The event will include a series of speakers, including U.Va. President John T. Casteen III, Jay Zieman, chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences, Karen McGlathery, lead scientist of the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center, and officials from the Nature Conservancy, the National Science Foundation, and other federal and state agencies, and the Anheuser-Busch Companies (which provided $1.25 million to build the center).

U.Va. has been conducting research through the LTER since 1986 with major support from the National Science Foundation, as well as various other research grants and private donations. Recently the research was funded for an additional six years by NSF ($820,000 per year) through its LTER program, which includes a network of environmental projects at 26 sites across the North American continent.