Combining LTER data with other monitoring data to achieve a broader spatial and temporal perspective

The Santa Barbara Coastal LTER has been monitoring ecological communities at 11 shallow sub-tidal reefs in the Santa Barbara Channel for more than a decade.  Here we combine these data with two much longer datasets from the region:  the Channel Islands National Park’s kelp forest monitoring project and the U.S. Geological Survey’s San Nicolas Island baseline monitoring project.  These two projects conduct annual sampling of 40 reefs in the Southern California Bight, including 19 reefs which have been sampled for more than 30 years, and use comparable methodology to that employed by the SBC-LTER.  These longer term data provide a comprehensive record of how the fish, invertebrate and algal communities have changed at these sites over time, and allow us to put the patterns documented in the SBC-LTER’s community monitoring into a broader spatial and temporal context.  This is particularly important for understanding how the community states that we have observed in the past decade may reflect climatic conditions over that same time period.  For example, kelp has been abundant in the Santa Barbara Channel for the past decade, but longer term data shows that in previous phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation it was much less abundant.