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...