The rocky shores of the US West Coast are home to diverse ecological communities made up of species that are uniquely adapted for survival at the harsh boundary between land and sea. Even so, physical or environmental stressors regularly kill swaths of animals on the rocks. This is called disturbance....
Despite progressive policies and continued advances in ocean management, numerous shifts associated with global changes have been observed in marine ecosystems in recent years, including warming, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation. As global change accelerates, science is needed to inform evidence-based management strategies for continued ecosystem services. Resilience management, in which...
Twenty years ago, the creation of a new scientific program, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), funded by the Packard Foundation, provided the opportunity to integrate—from the outset—research, monitoring, and outreach to the public, policymakers, and managers. PISCO’s outreach efforts were initially focused primarily on sharing scientific...
A major goal of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) has been to understand the impacts of climate change and variability on the coastal ecosystems of the inner shelf of the California Current Large Marine System in particular, and other marine and even nonmarine systems more generally....
Coastal upwelling ecosystems around the world are defined by wind-generated currents that bring deep, nutrient-rich waters to the surface ocean where they fuel exceptionally productive food webs. These ecosystems are also now understood to share a common vulnerability to ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH). In the California Current Large Marine...
Marine macrophyte wrack (macroalgae and seagrasses) frequently washes onto beaches but little is known about the factors controlling its biogeographic variability. We report on a large-scale study of macrophyte wrack deposition patterns on the US Pacific Northwest coast. We measured macrophyte wrack on 12 sandy beach sites from southern Washington...
On Oregon coastal rocky shores, filter‐feeders were relatively abundant and macrophytes were relatively scarce at Strawberry Hill, whereas opposite abundance patterns occurred at Boiler Bay. To determine whether nearshore oceanographic differences were associated with these patterns, we made shore‐based measurements of nutrient and Chl a concentrations. We used a three‐level...
The impact of herbivores on primary producers in differing oceanographic
regimes is a matter of intense ecological interest due to ongoing changes in their abundance,
that of their predators, and anthropomorphic alteration of nutrient cycles and climatic
patterns. Interactions between productivity and herbivory in marine habitats have been
studied on...
The impact of herbivores on primary producers in differing oceanographic
regimes is a matter of intense ecological interest due to ongoing changes in their abundance,
that of their predators, and anthropomorphic alteration of nutrient cycles and climatic
patterns. Interactions between productivity and herbivory in marine habitats have been
studied on...
The impact of herbivores on primary producers in differing oceanographic
regimes is a matter of intense ecological interest due to ongoing changes in their abundance,
that of their predators, and anthropomorphic alteration of nutrient cycles and climatic
patterns. Interactions between productivity and herbivory in marine habitats have been
studied on...
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) first appeared in Oregon in April 2014, and by June had spread to most of the coast. Although delayed compared to areas to the north and south, SSWD was initially most intense in north and central Oregon and spread southward. Up to 90% of individuals...
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) first appeared in Oregon in April 2014, and by June had spread to most of the coast. Although delayed compared to areas to the north and south, SSWD was initially most intense in north and central Oregon and spread southward. Up to 90% of individuals...
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) first appeared in Oregon in April 2014, and by June had spread to most of the coast. Although delayed compared to areas to the north and south, SSWD was initially most intense in north and central Oregon and spread southward. Up to 90% of individuals...
Ecosystems are shaped by processes occurring and interacting over multiple
temporal and spatial scales. Theory suggests such complexity can be simplified by focusing on
processes sharing the same scale as the pattern of interest. This scale-dependent approach to
studying communities has been challenged by multiscale meta-ecosystem theory, which
recognizes that...
Ecosystems are shaped by processes occurring and interacting over multiple
temporal and spatial scales. Theory suggests such complexity can be simplified by focusing on
processes sharing the same scale as the pattern of interest. This scale-dependent approach to
studying communities has been challenged by multiscale meta-ecosystem theory, which
recognizes that...
Ecosystems are shaped by processes occurring and interacting over multiple
temporal and spatial scales. Theory suggests such complexity can be simplified by focusing on
processes sharing the same scale as the pattern of interest. This scale-dependent approach to
studying communities has been challenged by multiscale meta-ecosystem theory, which
recognizes that...
1. Theoretical and empirical ecology has transitioned from a focus on the role of negative interactions in species coexistence to a more pluralistic view that acknowledges that coexistence in natural communities is more complex, and depends on species interactions that vary in strength, sign, and reciprocity, and such contexts as...
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) first appeared in Oregon in April 2014, and by June had spread to most of the coast. Although delayed compared to areas to the north and south, SSWD was initially most intense in north and central Oregon and spread southward. Up to 90% of individuals...
Knowledge of nutrient pathways and their resulting ecological interactions can alleviate numerous environmental problems associated with nutrient increases in both natural and managed systems. Although not unique, coastal systems are particularly prone to complex ecological interactions resulting from nutrient inputs from both the land and sea. Nutrient inputs to coastal...
Ecosystems are shaped by processes occurring and interacting over multiple temporal and spatial scales. Theory suggests such complexity can be simplified by focusing on processes sharing the same scale as the pattern of interest. This scale-dependent approach to studying communities has been challenged by multiscale meta-ecosystem theory, which recognizes that...
The impact of herbivores on primary producers in differing oceanographic regimes is a matter of intense ecological interest due to ongoing changes in their abundance, that of their predators, and anthropomorphic alteration of nutrient cycles and climatic patterns. Interactions between productivity and herbivory in marine habitats have been studied on...
The proliferation of efficient fishing practices has promoted the depletion of
commercial stocks around the world and caused significant collateral damage to marine
habitats. Recent empirical studies have shown that marine reserves can play an important role
in reversing these effects. Equilibrium metapopulation models predict that networks of marine
reserves...
The intermittent upwelling hypothesis (IUH) predicts that the strength of
ecological subsidies, organismal growth responses, and species interactions will vary
unimodally along a gradient of upwelling from persistent downwelling to persistent upwelling,
with maximal levels at an intermediate or ‘‘intermittent’’ state of upwelling. To test this model,
we employed the...
Hypoxia is increasing in coastal zones worldwide, with acute effects on demersal fish and benthic invertebrate communities in shallow coastal and estuarine habitats. Less studied are the effects of hypoxia on planktonic larvae of open coastal habitats. Climate change projections suggest intensified hypoxia in open coast upwelling systems, such as...
Organisms eating each other are only one of many types of well documented and important interactions among species. Other such types include habitat modification, predator interference and facilitation. However, ecological network research has been typically limited to either pure food webs or to networks of only a few (<3) interaction...
Through bottom–up inputs and larval transport, benthic–pelagic links can have an important effect on benthic community structure. Recent work on community structure of northeast Pacific rocky shores has focused on latitudinal differences in recruitment of intertidal invertebrates as a driver of variation in community structure. Recruitment differences are associated with...
Filter-feeding invertebrates consume phytoplankton and detritus and therefore serve as important mediators of the exchange of materials from nearshore pelagic to intertidal benthic ecosystems. Here, we evaluated the linkages between nearshore and intertidal systems on temperate rocky reefs on the coasts of Oregon, USA, and New Zealand’s South Island. We...
Insight into the dependence of benthic communities on biological and physical processes in nearshore pelagic environments, long considered a ``black box,'' has eluded ecologists. In rocky intertidal communities at Oregon coastal sites 80 km apart, differences in abundance of sessile invertebrates, herbivores, carnivores, and macrophytes in the low zone were...
Wind-driven coastal ocean upwelling supplies nutrients to the
euphotic zone near the coast. Nutrients fuel the growth of phytoplankton,
the base of a very productive coastal marine ecosystem
[Pauly D, Christensen V (1995) Nature 374:255–257]. Because
nutrient supply and phytoplankton biomass in shelf waters are
highly sensitive to variation in...
Velocity measurements from 17 deployments of moored acoustic Doppler current
profilers obtained during four summer upwelling seasons are used to describe the crossshelf
divergence of Ekman transport in the inner shelf off Oregon. For each deployment
the measured surface and bottom cross-shelf transports were compared with estimates
of the theoretical...