Ocean ecosystems are healthy if they can sustain the supply of ecosystem goods and services to coastal societies without compromising their fundamental structure and functioning. COS is shaping its work on ocean ecosystem health around a series of cross-cutting issues at the forefront of dialogues about ocean sustainability. These include working groups and interdisciplinary teams concentrating on ecosystem-based marine spatial planning, social-ecological systems, ocean governance, cumulative impacts, and marine ecosystem thresholds and indicators. The focal areas we use to categorize our work generally—ecosystem health, land-sea interactions and climate change—are synergistic and therefore frequently intersect.
Stanford scientists have developed the Kelp Forest Array to monitor the health of California's iconic giant kelp forests. The Kelp Forest Array (KFA) is a state-‐of-‐the-‐art cabled platform located near a kelp forest in California’s Monterey Bay that allows observational and experimental science to build our understanding of the local impacts of global climate change and human activities.
