The environment of the Gulf includes terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine systems coupled with social systems that define the daily lives of millions of residents. These systems act and interact across different scales of time and geography, and relate to many of the most urgent problems the region faces. Improved and informed decision-making will be needed to adapt to a changing climate, manage land use, and incorporate social and economic benefits while protecting the environmental resources of the Gulf. Over the next five year, this program area will focus on science for decision-making with the following specific goals and objectives:

Goal 2.0: Strengthen connections between science and decision-making to better protect the environment in the Gulf region.

• Objective 2.1: Prioritize needs for scientific information to inform decision-making about human interaction with the upland, terrestrial, marine, or coastal environments in the Gulf region.
• Objective 2.2: Lead the development of new, integrative frameworks for decision-making to connect the physical, biological, and social systems and identify ways to address multiple stresses across the Gulf region.
• Objective 2.3: Foster improvements in ecosystem restoration efforts by bringing stakeholders together to define common goals and outcomes, identify data and monitoring gaps, and synthesize and assess what has been learned thus far.

The GRP may support these types of activities to fulfill these objectives:

• Produce quality reports that document trends in environmental stewardship and protection and identify key challenges or knowledge gaps, particularly those at the intersection of offshore energy system safety and human health and community resilience.
• Convene ecosystem restoration managers, practitioners, and funders to: foster exchange of restoration best practices and lessons learned and develop strategic approaches for future restoration activities.
• Support pilot projects, scenario planning, demonstration sites, predictive models, and decision-support tools that address identified needs or answer identified questions, and that help the GRP scale and replicate solutions across the Gulf.