Open-File Report 00-321: Activities and Preliminary Results of Nearshore Benthic Habitat Mapping in Southern California, 1998

Activities and Preliminary Results of Nearshore Benthic Habitat Mapping in Southern California, 1998

Regional Geologic Setting

The area of study is the Northern Channel Islands and adjacent areas of the California coast. The Northern Channel Island chain runs from east to west, forming the southern margin of the Santa Barbara Channel and the southernmost range of the western Transverse Ranges. The regional structure of the Northern Channel Islands forms a broad anticlinorium, mapped eastward as a continuous structure over at least 220 km to the Santa Monica Mountains (Seeber and Sorlien, in review). Present-day folding and uplift of the Northern Channel Islands may be a result of slip on the north-dipping Channel Islands Thrust, the regional thrust fault inferred to underlie the Northern Channel Islands (Shaw and Suppe, 1994). The thrust faulting has uplifted and exposed volcanic and sedimentary rocks of Miocene age on the islands and adjacent seafloor, and small local exposures of older rocks in the study area (Vedder et al., 1986).

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Suggested citation:

Cochrane, Guy R., and Lafferty, Kevin D., 2000, Activities and Preliminary Results of Nearshore Benthic Habitat Mapping in Southern California, 1998: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 00-321, https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2000/0321/.

U.S. Department of the Interior
SALLY JEWELL, Secretary

U.S. Geological Survey
Suzette M. Kimball, Acting Director