Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
  • BCO-DMO Processing Description
• Data Files
• Supplemental Files
• Related Publications
• Parameters
• Project Information
• Funding

Simulated Lagrangian drifters were embedded within a 5-km horizontal resolution ocean/sea ice/ice shelf Regional Ocean Modeling System circulation model of the Southern Ocean for the period 2016-2019.  The drifters include simplistic behavior of the early life stages of krill including the initial descent/ascent cycle, diel vertical migration (DVM), and advection with simulated sea ice velocity, instead of ocean velocity, under certain conditions.  Four simulations were run varying different aspects (conditions under which krill were advected with sea ice velocities instead of ocean, details of DVM, details of initial descent/ascent cycle) of the simulated behavior in order to determine the impact on pathways and connectivity.   Drifters were released over three separate summer seasons (2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19), resulting in twelve separate simulation data sets (presented as individual netCDF files within this BCO-DMO dataset, See "Data Files" section).

The ocean circulation model that the drifters were embedded in that was used for the simulations was exactly the same as in Dinniman et al. (2020, doi: 10.1029/2019JC015736), except that the atmospheric forcing was updated to be from ERA5 (Hersbach et al., 2020, doi:10.1002/qj.3803) and now covers the period 2016-2019.

Model version used: ROMS/TOMS, Version 3.6 (Shchepetkin &  McWilliams, 2005)

See "Data Files" for a netCDF file per simulation (80GB per file).  Files are in netCDF-4/HDF5 file format using convention CF-1.4.  Examples of global attributes and parameter descriptions added as supplemental file "example_header_so_flt.008.d3650.txt" (results of 'ncdump -h so_flt.008.d3650.nc' ).

* Metadata extracted from submitted netCDF files but no changes were made to the files.
* Supplmental file example_header_so_flt.008.d3650.txt added with contents of the header within so_flt.008.d3650.nc. This is so people can view the structure and global attributes before downloading one of the 80GB files.

This interdisciplinary research proposal seeks to inform the design and implementation of Southern Ocean marine protected areas (MPAs), while also providing new tools to highlight the global value of MPAs. The research proposed falls broadly across two themes: connectivity and ecosystem services.

Major data gaps remain in our understanding of the life history of Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) and Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), including around life history connectivity (Hanchet et al. 2015; Conroy et al. 2020). Connectivity refers to the movement of species across space and time, including migration pathways, foraging regions, and dispersal corridors. In the context of MPAs, understanding how a species moves through its life history can inform designing MPAs that ensures protection of the species (Balbar and Metaxas 2019) and can also reveal spillover effects, e.g., if fish protected in the boundaries of the MPA are the source for outside areas open to fishing (Roberts et al. 2001). Connectivity of krill and toothfish remains largely unknown and yet is critically important to ensure proper protection and efficacy of an MPA.

This project is supported by Pew Charitable Trusts Grant (35806) to the University of Colorado