Future Earth Coasts (formerly LOICZ)

The goal of Future Earth Coasts is to support sustainability and adaptation to global change in the coastal zone. It does so by linking natural and social sciences with knowledge of coastal communities at global, regional, and local scales. Future Earth Coasts operates as an international research project and global network of experts investigating the drivers and social-environmental impacts of global change in coastal zones.

Future Earth Coasts was originally named Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ), launched by IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) and IHDP (International Human Dimensions Programme), and became a core project of Future Earth in January 2015.

Future Earth Coasts is administered and supported by a distributed International Project Office. The head office and its director were based at the ZMT from 2019 - 2021.

Since January 2022, the main office has been jointly managed by East China Normal University in Shanghai and the Institute of Coastal Zone Research in Yantai, China, and Southern Cross University in Australia. Other branches of the International Project Office are hosted at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Virginia Institute of Technology (both US), the Southern Cross University in Australia, and jointly at East China Normal University in Shanghai and Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research in China.