Surrounded by the mountains of landlocked Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Teri O’Meara is focused on understanding the future of the vitally important ecosystems lining the nation’s coasts.

She brings biogeochemistry expertise and experience conducting research in the salt marshes of Maryland, the maritime forests of North Carolina and the tidal flats of New Zealand to the challenge of improving how global climate models represent coastal ecosystems.

“Our coastal ecosystems perform so many critical services,” O’Meara said. “They are also incredibly beautiful and increasingly endangered.”

With more than 95,000 miles of coastline in the United States alone, the landscape is vast, varied and vulnerable to natural and human-induced changes. Ecosystems such as estuaries, bays, mangroves and wetlands serve as a buffer zone between land and sea. They filter out pollutants, act as nurseries for many types of fish, limit erosion and play a significant role in carbon storage.

These ecosystems are struggling under a variety of pressures, including sea level rise, storm surges and land development. O’Meara’s research aims to better reflect these dynamic ecosystems in predictive models, which can help leaders examine future scenarios and take action.

As a staff scientist at ORNL with a joint appointment through the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, O’Meara brings a natural curiosity and a love of solving puzzles to her research. She enjoys seeking answers both big and small.

“I want to know everything about everything,” O’Meara said. “If you only focus on one process or subset of processes, you can miss the big picture.”

Making connections is at the heart of O’Meara’s work. She collaborates with both modelers and field scientists as part of a multi-laboratory Department of Energy project called Coastal Observations, Mechanisms and Predictions Across Systems and Scales, or COMPASS. She feels lucky to be part of such an integrated effort.