The California State University (CSU) Center for Integrative Coastal Observation, Research and Education (CICORE) is an applied coastal research center distributed throughout California. CICORE is dedicated to producing nationally relevant solutions to the many challenges facing our marine and estuarine environments while providing research, training and educational opportunities for CSU faculty and students. CICORE utilizes the unique distribution of the CSU campuses to create a coastal ocean observatory along the entire California coastline that focuses on the region from 100 meters deep up to and on to the shore, including estuaries, wetlands, and other critical coastal habitats. CICORE uses three core technologies (high resolution bathymetry, in-situ monitoring, and optical remote sensing) to address economically and environmentally important challenges such as coastal erosion, watershed impacts, chemical contamination of food webs, depletion of marine commercial resources, toxic plankton blooms, marine-borne pathogens, and the rapid invasion of coastal waters by non-indigenous species.

CICORE was established in 2002 to assist the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP), and local and regional governments meet the emerging national mandate for coastal ocean observation. CICORE is an integral part of both the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS) and the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS), which are Regional Associations in the national Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS).