Activities are conducted at the latitudinal scale of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem along the west coast of North America, anchored around the dynamics of hard-bottom habitats such as kelp forests and rocky shores and the oceanography of the nearshore ocean. The program studies changes in the ocean environment through both environmental monitoring and experiments, examining the causes and consequences of ecosystem changes over spatial scales that are the most relevant to marine species and management, but largely unstudied elsewhere.
