Summary

The Bering Sea Project incorporates the BEST and BSIERP data archives. The Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) project is a multi-year, interdisciplinary program to develop an end-to-end mechanistic understanding of how climate change will affect the marine ecosystems of the eastern Bering Sea, the continued use of their resources, and the social, economic and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on them. BEST is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP).

The Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP) focuses on understanding trophic interactions among colony-based foragers, hot spot foragers, pelagic forage species, pelagic predators and benthic predators. Hypotheses are tested in a linked set of spatially explicit, competing models that connect climate scenarios, physical and biological oceanographic models, a lower and upper trophic level ecosystem model and economic and management models. BSIERP is administered by the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), Anchorage, Alaska.