The bountiful natural resources of the Northeast Pacific (NEP) long sustained thriving populations of native peoples. The central importance of salmon, halibut, marine mammals, seabirds and other species to the cultural life of indigenous populations is beautifully represented in the legends and distinctive artwork of this region (Holm, 1965). Today, as human activities strongly affect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems through harvesting of timber and fishery resources, water use practices, and habitat degradation in this region, the critical importance of understanding how these impacts might interact with further effects of global climate change is abundantly clean The processes underlying the generally high productivity in the nearshore waters of the Northeast Pacific differ in the various subsystems and the effects of climate change can be expected to be manifested in distinctive ways in each (Batchelder et al., this issue; Weingartner et al., this issue). How these changes will affect overall levels of productivity in the Northeast Pacific is a critical question for GLOBEC researchers.

Strub, P.T., H.P. Batchelder, and T.J. Weingartner. 2002. U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific Program: Overview. Oceanography 15(2):30–35, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2002.19.

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