Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1017 is located on the southern slope of the Santa Lucia Bank in 955 m of water, ~50 km west of Point Conception and Point Arguello on the central Californian margin (Fig. 1; Lyle, Koizumi, Richter, et al., 1997). This location is of interest because of its setting beneath a persistent modern upwelling structure within the California Current system and by its location at the boundary between two oceanographic provinces of the eastern boundary current system—the southern California Bight and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Point Conception segment (Brink et al., 1984; Hickey, 1998). The site is also particularly important because of its close proximity to Santa Barbara Basin where recent studies have found evidence for rapid millennial-scale climatic and oceanographic fluctuations during the late Quaternary that reflect oceanic changes in circulation and intermediate water ventilation (Kennett, Baldauf, and Lyle, 1995; Kennett and Ingram, 1995; Behl and Kennett, 1996; Cannariato et al., 1999).
Five holes were cored at this site with the last (Hole 1017E) dedicated to a high-resolution study of the late Quaternary paleoceanography of this region (see Tada et al., Chap. 25, this volume). The three cores from Hole 1017E (~25 m in aggregate length) were sliced into >850, 3-cm increments, each of which was split and distributed for determination of isotopic, elemental, organic geochemical, biomarker, magnetic, textural, and fabric characteristics of the sediments by various researchers. The study presented here focuses on the character and nature of textural change (grain size and sorting) at Site 1017 over the past ~130 ka and throughout the uppermost 25 m of sediment. This data provides insight into how the sedimentary record was physically influenced by changes in the strength of intermediate water-depth contour currents and eddies, by variation in the effectiveness of offshore transport related to sea level, or by climatically related changes in river discharge.