Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

CTD (conductivity, depth, temperature) casts taken at discrete stations located along transects in the Gulf of Maine in 2015 and 2016.  

Transects were separated by circa 1-1.5 nautical miles and were oriented either across-shelf or along-shelf.  Sampling was limited to 2 hrs. in the middle of the tidal cycle, on either flood or ebb tides.  CTD was a YSI Castaway.  Headers in 2016 data files contain coordinates of the instrument at the start and stop of each cast.

Labeling conventions for "Transect":
Transects ending in "AS" or "A" are oriented along-shelf
Transects ending in "XS" or "X" are oriented across-shelf
Transect QMC contains both across-shelf and along-shelf components

All processing was via YSI software. Depths were calculated from pressures and all measured values expressed as depth. Up-cast data were excluded, so only down-cast data are presented. File type is csv.

BCO-DMO Data Manager Processing Notes:
* added a conventional header with dataset name, PI name, version date
* added ISO Date (yyyy-mm-dd) added in addition to date in format yymmdd
* modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions
* rounded values to 2 decimal places (were as long as 17 decimal places)
* added station information from ctd_station dataset (added station lat/lon)
* added sampling location information from information in filenames and foldernames (Site, Orientation, Tide, Station, etc)
* added "Along and Across" as the value for QuoddyMooseCove based on note "Transect QMC contains both across-shelf and along-shelf components"

Rocky intertidal habitats in the Gulf of Maine (GoM) provide a model system to examine the structure and dynamics of natural communities. Throughout the Gulf of Maine, the same species are often found in these habitats but community structure, dynamics and productivity differ markedly among 3 distinct regions (southern, central and northern GoM). Past influential work, conducted primarily in the southern and central GoM, focused on the local processes driving intertidal community structure but produced very different conceptual models of how these communities are structured. This project examines whether regional differences in rocky shore community processes are driven by differences in recruitment that are shaped by regional variation in temperature and food availability and nearshore coastal oceanography. This project will improve the understanding of how large-scale environmental forces interact with local processes to control the distribution of species and the structure and dynamics of these communities. Understanding the interaction between processes operating at different scales is fundamentally important to developing more reliable models that can be used to predict community dynamics. In addition, data resulting from this project will have important implications for regional dynamics in commercially important species and for ecosystem and fisheries management within the GoM.

The overarching hypothesis of this project is that regional differences in community-level processes are driven by very different patterns of population connectivity and recruitment in a few key species, and that these differences are ultimately caused by regional variation in temperature and food availability and mediated by physical larval transport processes. Hence, the project will test the following hypotheses with manipulative field experiments, field sampling, connectivity estimates, and integrative modeling:
1) Locally-dispersing species dominate dynamics in regions with a net export of planktonic larvae (Northern GoM), while species with planktonic larvae dominate the dynamics in regions with high settlement and extensive connectivity among populations (Southern GoM).
2) Settlement density of species with planktonic larvae increases from northern to southern regions in accord with regional variation in food availability.
3) Population connectivity varies greatly among regions, with regions differing in the degree to which they are self-seeded or serve as larval sources vs. sinks; self-seeding leads to relatively localized population dynamics in the middle portion of the GoM.
4) Patterns of population connectivity are driven by physical transport processes and can be represented by coupling basic larval behavior models with circulation models.

At 18 different sites in the GoM across ~ 600 km, surveys will evaluate variation in recruitment, food availability and secondary productivity and experiments will assess community processes in wave-exposed and sheltered habitats. We will use hydrographic, current profile, and larval vertical distribution surveys to collect data for coupled larval/circulation models. Population connectivity will be both modeled and empirically evaluated (for one species) using elemental fingerprinting. A spatially explicit metacommunity model will integrate across all project components and test the relative importance of regional and local processes in controlling community organization and dynamics.