Table of Contents

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

Physical and optical data from 3 wave-powered profiling moorings (WireWalkers) (.mat files)

Data are collected onboard the profilers. Those data were collected by a CTD with additional channels. The data are provided as vectors (upcast only). The .idx field indicates the start and end of each individual profile. The channels are, as follows:

Upcast only time series:
T = Temperature, degrees C (Seabird 49 CTD or Seabird 52 for ww_esp)
P = Pressure, meters (Seabird 49 CTD or Seabird 52 for ww_esp)
time = Time (matlab datenum format)
C = conductivity (milliSiemens per meter) (Seabird 49 CTD or Seabird 52 for ww_esp)
S = salinity (PSU) (Seabird 49 CTD or Seabird 52 for ww_esp)
F_chla = Chlorophyll fluorescence (Relative Fluorescence Units) (Turner Designs Cyclops 7 chlorophyll fluorometer)

or  for ww_esp:
C3_chla: Chlorophyll fluorescence (Relative Fluorescence Units) (Turner Designs C3 fluorometer)
C3_cdom: Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Material (Relative Fluorescence Units) (Turner Designs C3 fluorometer)
C3_turb: Turbidity (Relative Fluorescence Units) (Turner Designs C3 fluorometer)

Sampling and Analytical Methodology:
These data come from a set of wave-powered profiling moorings. > 8,000 profiles were collected at each mooring. The downcast have been excised due to low data quality. The CTDs were recently calibrated, while the fluorometers are reported as RFU (rather than chlorophyll concentrations) given uncertainties associated with non-photochemical quenching.

ww_m19 and ww_wqm2 CTDs sampled at 16 Hz, while ww_esp CTD sampled at 1Hz. ww_esp also had compromised salinity for much of the deployment due to fouling in the conductivity cell.

The moorings were at the following depths: ww_m19 = 50m, ww_wqm2 = 22m, ww_esp = 22m.

Data Processing:
The data have been processed by removing the downcast (e.g. resulting data is only from profiler upcasts). Individual upcasts are indexed in the .idx field. Otherwise the data are unprocessed.

BCO-DMO Processing Notes
 - Generated from original files contributed by Andrew Lucas

In autumn 2012, Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) will divert ~150 million gallons/day of secondarily-treated effluent to a nearshore (1 mile offshore) outfall pipe over a period of ~4 weeks. No discharges of this magnitude have been conducted in decades. The planned diversion is expected to create a buoyant surface plume that will spread over much of the coastal region. Because OCSD plans to "super-chlorinate" and then dechlorinate the discharge, the effect of the plume should be predominantly a nutrient addition rather than direct addition of intact microbial populations. The PIs propose to address two broad questions through a study of the plume:

First, what happens ecologically and physiologically to the phytoplankton assemblage when nutrients are discharged in the surface ocean for extended periods of time?
Second, can this dynamic and shifting environment be sampled by deploying multiple technologies to identify the physical/chemical drivers of the biological response at ecologically relevant space and time scales?

They will test two hypotheses:
H1: Continual discharge of nutrients to the surface ocean results in a dinoflagellate-dominated bloom which leads to dampening or cessation of vertical migration of the dinoflagellates and drives a shift to net heterotrophy.
H2: The bloom will initially result in a strong local sink for carbon dioxide which gradually develops into a strong source as heterotrophy develops.

The study is expected to provide a time-evolving picture of interactions within and between autotrophic and heterotrophic communities and will illustrate the short-term biogeochemical and ecological consequences of sustained nutrient discharge to a shallow coastal site. The planned diversion provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the ecophysiological response in a natural setting over a period of weeks, including the interaction of biology, chemistry, and physics, and it will contribute to basic understanding of anthropogenic nutrient loading to the coastal ocean. Undergraduate and graduate education and training will be furthered through active participation in lab, field, and data synthesis activities involving academic, government, and industry partners.

Affiliated Programs or Projects:
- NOAA ECOHAB Project (NA11NOS4780030): A Regional Comparison of Upwelling and Coastal Land Use Patterns on the Development of HAB Hotspots Along the California Coast
- Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System
- Central and Northern California Coastal Ocean Observing System