UC Marine Council

The coastal ocean environment displays variability across a wide array of time scales. This environmental variability confounds many coastal environmental concerns, e.g., water quality, fisheries, community ecology, and conservation. There is a need for long-term high-quality data over a network of sites.

We propose to establish such a coastal environment observation network, with sites at seven of the UC campuses. At each site long-term, high-resolution data would be collected, with a common system of quality control, analysis and interpretation. Physical, chemical, and biological data would be obtained concurrently. The multiple sites will allow for resolution of spatial pattern in coastal environment variability, while links with other observation programs will allow for resolution of offshore and land influences. The data will be web-reported in real time and data analyses and interpretations will be reported at regular intervals. The underlying concept of this system is that data collection would continue indefinitely and with minimal operational costs. The goal is to provide a simple but high-quality record for the next century.

In the first year, each site will be instrumented with sensors for temperature, salinity, sea level, chlorophyll fluorescence, turbidity, and PAR. These sensors will be wired for real-time transmission to local data loggers as well as to a centralized data quality control node at UCSC. In the second year, each site will be instrumented with sensors for dissolved nitrate concentration and meteorology and we will seek to integrate other automated coastal observation sites into our UC protocols. Further, analysis and data quality checks of historical data will proceed in parallel with this program (supported by separate funds). The 7 investigators will form a management team, ensuring a common level of operation at all sites and providing adequate channels for consultation with researchers and students at each campus.