Nationally, there is growing demand for scientific research and expertise. Rigorous science and responsive technical assistance are increasingly necessary for sound management and policy decisions. Complex environmental issues that transcend boundaries make it essential for agencies to work together effectively. Universities, private research institutions, and the broader scientific community face similar pressures and must respond and adapt to this new environment for science.

CESUs are directed toward federal scientists, but other CESUs across the U.S. host significant state government programs and are a useful mechanism for delivering federal money to states.

Californian CESU

Two facts indicate that people and biological diversity in California are on a collision course. First, one out of nine people in the U.S. lives in California and the population is expected to grow from 30 million to 50 million over the next 20 years. Second, California is recognized as a hotspot of biological diversity due to a large number of distinct ecosystems that support high numbers of endemic species, and over half of this land is under federal control. The CESU Council has formally approved the establishment of the California CESU with the University of California and its partners.

Federal agencies with environmental mandates are facing huge management and decision–making challenges, and they will continue to face these issues for the foreseeable future. An important problem for all agencies is a lack of data and analyses to support such decisions. Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units have been established in a variety of biogeographic regions to use the intellectual resources of universities to provide federal agencies with high quality data and analyses to support management decisions about environmental concerns.

The University of California (UC) will act as the host university for the Californian CESU. The UC system is widely respected as one of the best public university systems in the world. Its ten campuses (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz) are located strategically throughout California. They include some of the best programs in the environmental sciences in the United States, house over a thousand faculty members with expertise in environmental science, a wealth of libraries and museums, dozens of centers that provide state–of–the–art instrumentation and analytical facilities to support environmental research, and an outstanding system of natural reserves and field stations.

Since 1999, a dozen CESUs have been competitively established in the following biogeographic areas: Chesapeake Watershed, Colorado Plateau, Desert Southwest, Great Basin, Great Lakes–Northern Forest, Great Plains, Gulf Coast, North Atlantic Coast, Pacific Northwest (including Southeast Alaska), Rocky Mountains, South Florida/Caribbean, and Southern Appalachian Mountains. The Californian CESU will join these twelve in working towards a complete national network.

For more information on CESUs, visit the network website at http://www.cesu.org/cesu/.