The Land Margin Ecosystem Research (LMER) Program in the United
States is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through two of
its subsidiary units, Long Term Studies and Biological Oceanography.  The
LMER program was designed to address gaps in the coverage of certain
ecosystems by multi-disciplinary teams, specifically the lack of studies of
coastal boundary zones.  Our Georgia interdisciplinary team effort is the
newest of four such LMER sites around the United States.  In the
presentation I will describe our rivers and estuaries, discuss the aims and
significance of our research questions and, finally, provide an overview of
our findings during the first two years.  This abstract is used to provide
some comparisons and background material against which the research
findings can be discussed in the oral presentation.  It is a condensed
version of a paper produced for a symposium in 1996 in Rostock, Germany
(Wiegert et al., in press).  A more detailed general comparison of the
rivers and our preliminary findings will appear in Alber et al., (in
preparation).