Recently the marine community was made aware of the development and delivery of new plankton products created from National Reference Station (NRS) and Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) samples. Following additional work by members of the IMOS Zooplankton Ocean Observations and Modelling (ZOOM) Task Team and led by Claire Davies (CSIRO) we have released another dataset. In addition to the already available 1) Raw data, 2) Species-level data, 3) Genera-level data and 4) Higher taxonomic groups (e.g. chaetognath, larvacean etc.) we have developed a range of derived indices which will be useful data summaries for the marine community.
To recap, the main advantages for each dataset are;
- Pre binned datasets – on step 3 of the AODN Portal you can select your preferred taxonomic level e.g. Genus, Species or Higher Taxonomic Groups.
- Absences are included – 0 abundance means that the species was actually looked for and not seen, -999 means the species was not looked for at the time of the sample.
- Taxonomic changes accounted for – as taxonomy changes over time and analyst abilities to identify improve more species are able to be identified over time. The products account for this so that the data can confidently be used for time series analysis.
The new index tables added (Derived CPR Indices/Derived NRS Indices), have pre-calculated a range of indices including:
- Mean body-size of copepods in the sample.
- Total abundance.
- Diatom : dinoflagellate ratios.
- Herbivore : Carnivore ratios
Satellite SST and Chlorophyll values are also included as parameters in each sample for easy reference.
The CPR collections have 28 indices, and the NRS collections have 33 indices included for each sample.
The products are available via the AODN Portal –
IMOS – AusCPR: Phytoplankton Abundance
IMOS – AusCPR: Zooplankton Abundance
IMOS National Reference Station (NRS) – Phytoplankton Abundance and Biovolume
IMOS National Reference Station (NRS) – Zooplankton Abundance
For more information read the metadata files attached to the dataset;
IMOS – AusCPR: Phytoplankton Abundance
IMOS – AusCPR: Zooplankton Abundance
IMOS National Reference Station (NRS) – Phytoplankton Abundance and Biovolume
IMOS National Reference Station (NRS) – Zooplankton Abundance
Feedback on these Plankton products or the AODN Portal are always welcome. Please send correspondence to info(at)aodn.org.au.