Santa Barbara is located on a sandy lowland on the coast of southern California, 153 km northwest of Los Angeles and 563 km southwest of San Francisco. It borders the Santa Barbara Channel which is bounded on the north and east by the mainland shoreline of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, on the south by the Channel Islands (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa) and on the west by the open waters of the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1B-1).