Plumes and Blooms

The Plumes and Blooms program is a joint collaboration among UCSB faculty, student and staff researchers at the Institute of Computational Earth System Science (ICESS), NOAA researchers at the Coastal Services Center (Charleston, SC) and the NOAA sanctuary managers of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS). Since August, 1996, monthly research cruises have been conducted to collect measurements. These measurements include temperature and salinity, ocean color spectra, and water column profiles of red light transmission and chlorophyll fluorescence (indexes of suspended particulate load and phytoplankton abundance).

The transect observations begin at the shelf waters north of Santa Rosa island and end at an area off Goleta Point. These repeat observations are combined with satellite imagery to build a time-series of the changing ocean color conditions in the Santa Barbara Channel.