Figure 6. Leftmost scatterplot (a) illustrates the relationships between βFC and βSal for each station colored by the station’s associated SGA letter. The top right scatterplots (b) illustrate βFC and βSal for each station within the SGA. The lower right histograms (c) show the distributions of βSal values broken down by SGA letter. Both (b) and (c) further demonstrate the spatial variation in salinity trends and relationships between βFC and βSal across the coast.
There were weakly correlated, somewhat grouped relationships between βFC and βSal along the full coast (Figure 6a), with strongly negative correlations in SGA B and somewhat in C, weakly correlated relationships in SGAs D, F, G, and H, and a positive correlation in SGA E (Figure 6b). When broken out by SGA (Figure 6c), the βSal distribution varied from lower negative values with higher spread in the southern SGAs A, B, and C, to higher positive βSal values with more narrow spread in the central SGAs D, E, and F. SGAs G and H had lower βSal values than the more central areas, but higher than the more southern areas (Figure 6c).