The diverse landscape of the Morro Bay watershed supports a range of functions—ecological and otherwise—for its many inhabitants. The Morro Bay Historical Ecology Study will guide climate adaptation and ecologically resilient habitat restoration projects in the region by reconstructing past patterns and processes that furnished ecosystem services prior to major Euro-American modification of the landscape. Using a variety of early sources such as historical maps and images, aerial photography, textual accounts, and early land surveys of the watershed, the study will produce spatially explicit representations of the historical function and condition of the watershed and a report describing early landscape patterns and processes.