* Astronomy

The northern shelf of the Santa Barbara basin exposes bedrock at several locations. Folded and faulted strata of the Upper Miocene Monterey and Sisquoc Formations crop out on the shelf south of Goleta, where there are also extensive active hydrocarbon seeps. The shelf edge between Santa Barbara and Gaviota follows the 85 m depth contour.
Bathymetric data show that the northern flank of the Santa Barbara Basin has experienced massive slope failures.
The most prominent feature is the 134-km² compound slump and debris flow associated with the Goleta landslide located off Coal Oil Point near Goleta. The Goleta slide is 14.6-km long, and is 10.5 km wide, extending from 90 m to nearly 574 m depth. The Goleta landslide is composed of distinct western, central and eastern segments, suggestive of multiple failure events. Each segment contains a well-defined head scarp, down-dropped head block and a slide debris lobe. The debris lobes exhibit hummocky topography in their central areas that appear to result from compression during down slope movement. The toes of the western and eastern lobes are well defined in the multibeam image, whereas the toe of the central lobe is less distinct and presumably older.


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Latitude: 34 º 20`, Longitude: 120º 00`

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