The coastal upwelling system offers ideal conditions to address four scientific themes of relevance to IMBER goals:

1) Retrospective analyses of physical boundary conditions and biogeochemical cycles;

2) Identification of key processes/species and analysis of key rates of physical, biogeochemical and biological ecosystem components;

3) Quantifying feedback of trophic structures on biogeochemical cycles;

4) Simulations of interactions between shelf ecosystem – open ocean – atmosphere.

Project tasks, which are designed to build on and develop regional scientific capacity, are empirical and theoretical studies into processes and rates of ocean circulation, biogeochemical cycling of nutrient elements between water column, biota and sediments, and trophic interactions and energy flows. GENUS will employ a hierarchy of numerical models from regional climate, ocean circulation, ecosystems, and energy flows to develop scenarios of possible future developments of the coastal upwelling ecosystem to gauge how the interplay of changing physical drivers and continued exploitation will affect essential ecosystem goods and services.