Seasonal to interannual variability of San Francisco Bay Plume from space

San Francisco Bay Plume (SFBP) is an understudied, human-impacted river plume, which influences an extremely complex and ecologically important region, the Gulf of the Farallones, located in the California north central coast. Waters originated in the San Francisco Bay estuary, which are potentially contaminated by sewage, oil spills, toxins from harmful algal blooms, and other anthropogenic introduced pollutants, are delivered to the adjacent coastal ocean, particularly in ecologically relevant areas, such as the Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey National Marine Sanctuaries. Understanding the reach of influence of SFBP, and how this plume varies in time, is therefore crucial for the proper management of these Sanctuaries. A 17 year long time series of daily ocean color data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is combined with historical in situ salinity data from oceanographic cruises to create an empirical synthetic surface salinity (SSS) product for this region. Preliminary analysis of the space and time variability of the SFBP using the SSS are presented.