As part of the GLOBEC NEP collaborative research project on the California Current (CC),
this was the second of two cruises in 2002 to study the physical and biological oceanographic
distributions and processes that influence juvenile salmonid habitat along the Oregon and northern
California coast. The 2002 cruises followed similar...
Eight years (1994-2000) of data from the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimeter
are used to investigate the variability of the sea surface height and geostrophic
velocity of the California Current system. The TOPEX/Posiedon satellite measures
SSH along an exact-repeat set of groundtracks with a 10-day repeat cycle.
In the domain studied here...
In eastern boundary current upwelling ecosystems, mesoscale circulation features such as eddies and upwelling filaments play a prominent role in the transfer of water and the associated plankton from the productive nearshore to the oligotrophic deep sea. The relationship between mesoscale circulation, zooplankton distributions, and the across-shelf transport of coastal...
Within systems characterized by substantial spatial and temporal variability, abundances of organisms tend to be higher in localized areas. Within the northern California Current system, the identification of such marine, biological hotspots would be of great importance to resource managers, conservationists, and research planners, and is consequently a growing area...
As part of the U. S. GLOBEC NorthEast Pacific Program we made repeated seasonal hydrographic surveys in the northern California Current system (Figure 1) between July 1997 and September 2003. These surveys included early spring sampling along a pair of hydrographic sections, one north (at 44.6ºN) and one south (at...
The effects of wind forcing on coastal ocean circulation are studied using a
numerical modeling approach. The first region of interest is on the North Carolina
shelf, where the Coastal Ocean Processes (CoOP) Inner Shelf Study (ISS) took place
during August - November 1994. ISS observations are used to initialize,...
The effects of alongshore variability in topography (banks and capes) and spatial variability in the wind forcing, including the wind-stress curl, on coastal ocean circulation are studied using a combination of observations and model simulations. Satellite sea surface temperature observations are used to describe the seasonal evolution of temperature fronts...
The Oregon continental shelf waters are typically characterized by four to five major upwelling events that occur between May and October. The upwelled water is rich in nutrients, which fuels an increase in phytoplankton biomass. The onset of El Nino, however, can disrupt the normal physical processes along the Oregon...
This dissertation focuses on the importance of pelagic subsidies in the Northeast Pacific to rocky shore community regulation. My results document the patterns of pelagic subsidy supply, determine if those subsidies are correlated with community structure, and examine if community regulation differs between areas of high- and low-subsidies. Understanding how...