The Oregon Estuary Research Explorer is an interactive map-based bibliography of citations for coastal and estuarine research curated by librarians at the Guin Library at Hatfield Marine Science Center. The collection is intended to increase accessibility and visibility of historically complied research findings, and is comprised of over 4,000 citations spanning multiple decades.
The tool depicts watershed boundaries nested by scale, each of which are associated with relevant citations, which in turn are linked to published articles and data. At the largest scale, users can click on a stream or point location to see citations associated with specific land and water features such as bays, spits, lakes, creeks, and more. The citations can also be filtered by keywords including topics, researcher names, species, feature point and more. As a digital catalogue of past published research, the Gazetteer can be used to find data, discover what topics and locations make up the extent of coastal research, and which ones have yet to be explored.
The Oregon Estuary Research Explorer is maintained by the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network (OCOIN) project. By providing a platform for marine and coastal stakeholders to inform themselves on relevant and current research, OCOIN hopes to facilitate more informed decision-making and break down barriers to accessing science.