At that time, the instruments included an ADCP, a bottom CTD, a YSI sonde at 3 m above bottom, five thermistors (T1–T5) at 2, 7, 9, 11, and 14 m above bottom, and a near-surface CTD located 4.33 m below surface. (b) Configuration of the mooring in 2011. (a) Location of the mooring station (red circle) offshore of Mobile Bay, Alabama, with bathymetry (black lines). At over a decade long, the DISL OOS record has reached a sufficient length to begin examination of interannual patterns (e.g., inclusion in Impact of Mississippi River ). Both river systems have experienced significant increases in freshwater discharge since the 1950s, which makes the Mississippi Bight a good candidate for examining the effects of long-term changes in discharge input on a river-dominated continental shelf environment. This coastal region is directly impacted by the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay, the first and fourth largest river systems in the continental U.S., respectively. The site, located at 30☀5.410′N, 88☁2.694′W, 25 km southwest of Mobile Bay, Alabama (Figure 1a), is the longest-running time series of water column data in the Mississippi Bight. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) has been operating a small coastal OOS since 2004. Across the U.S., notable OOS include the 11 regional associations of NOAA's Integrated Ocean Observing System, the Ocean Observatories Initiative funded by NSF, and other regional efforts like the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans. They have direct applications to a wide range of scientific, commercial, and recreational interests and can serve as the core or complementary components of process studies in the coastal zone. ĭata from these OOS are important for assessing the state of estuarine and marine ecosystems and establishing baseline characteristics of a given environment. More recently, time series of biological and chemical properties such as dissolved oxygen and nitrogen have become available. The instrumentation measures many basic physical properties of the marine environment at sampling intervals of an hour or less, such as temperature, salinity, and density at discrete depth intervals from conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) instruments and velocity of water currents throughout the water column from acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs). Since the 1990s, ocean observing systems (OOS) have been established worldwide that include instrumentation deployed at fixed locations for multiple months. Our goals were to produce documentation and data provenance in sufficient detail for full science reproducibility of all studies that use data from this system, provide a template for other ocean observation operations, and highlight a need for better recognition of the significant amount of time and expertise often required to do both the data processing and the documentation for long-term observational systems. To illustrate some of these complexities, we have thoroughly documented the data processing steps for a small coastal ocean observing system near Mobile Bay, Alabama, that has been in operation since 2004. However, the task of taking the raw data files as downloaded from a variety of instruments from multiple manufacturers, and converting them into file formats that can be used to address specific research questions, can be highly complex and time consuming. Such data are essential for establishing baseline characteristics of marine and estuarine ecosystems. The oceanographic community routinely collects time series data of hydrography, water current velocity, and other basic physical, chemical, and biological properties of the marine environment.
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