It is located on the Rhode and West Rivers near Edgewater in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, near the western shore of Chesapeake Bay.

In 1964, Robert Lee Forrest of Baltimore left a 365-acre dairy farm on the Rhode River to the Smithsonian Institution.

[2] The 2,600-acre site occupied by SERC contains coastal plain forests, land used for agriculture, wetlands and marshes, and brackish environments.

It gives advice, consultation, and testimony to local, state, federal, and international governmental agencies, natural resource managers, policy makers, and conservation organizations.

[4] The center has been an innovator of biotelemetry to track behavior, habitat use, and movement of blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), a marine predator and a valuable crustacean fishery in North America.