A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels

A database of zooplankton biomass in Australian marine waters

Zooplankton biomass data have been collected in Australian waters since the 1930s, yet most datasets have been unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, scanned the primary and grey literature, and contacted researchers, to collate 49187 records of marine zooplankton biomass from waters around Australia (0–60°S, 110–160°E). Many of these datasets are relatively small, but when combined, they provide >85 years of zooplankton biomass data for Australian waters from 1932 to the present. Data have been standardised and all available metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network, allowing full public access. The Australian Zooplankton Biomass Database will be valuable for global change studies, research assessing trophic linkages, and for initialising and assessing biogeochemical and ecosystem models of lower trophic levels

A database of chlorophyll a in Australian waters

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ applies to the metadata files made available in this article.Chlorophyll a is the most commonly used indicator of phytoplankton biomass in the marine environment. It is relatively simple and cost effective to measure when compared to phytoplankton abundance and is thus routinely included in many surveys. Here we collate 173, 333 records of chlorophyll a collected since 1965 from Australian waters gathered from researchers on regular coastal monitoring surveys and ocean voyages into a single repository. This dataset includes the chlorophyll a values as measured from samples analysed using spectrophotometry, fluorometry and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The Australian Chlorophyll a database is freely available through the Australian Ocean Data Network portal (https://portal.aodn.org.au/). These data can be used in isolation as an index of phytoplankton biomass or in combination with other data to provide insight into water quality, ecosystem state, and relationships with other trophic levels such as zooplankton or fish

Data Paper. Data Paper

<h2>File List</h2><div> <p><a href="zooplankton_abundance_data.csv">zooplankton_abundance_data.csv</a> (MD5: 9d7672c32a4d2fe805cc91f081877e1b)</p> <p><a href="zooplankton_metadata.csv">zooplankton_metadata.csv</a> (MD5: 806bcd4109502706633c1bf61d2f3f66)</p> </div><h2>Description</h2><div> <p>Zooplankton are the key trophic link between primary producers and fish in pelagic ecosystems. Historically, there are few zooplankton time series in Australia, with no data sets longer than two years prior to 2008. Here we compile 98 676 abundance records of more than 1000 zooplankton taxa from unpublished research cruises, student projects, published literature, and the recent integrated marine observing system (IMOS). This data set covers the entire coastal and shelf region of Australia and dates back to 1938. Most records are for copepods, but there are also data for other taxa such as decapods, chaetognaths, thaliaceans, appendicularians, and cladocerans. Metadata are provided for each record, including dates, coordinates, and information on mesh size and sampling methods. To facilitate analysis across the multiple data sets, we have updated the species names according to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and converted units to abundance per cubic meter. These data will be valuable for studies of biodiversity, biogeography, impacts of climate change, and ecosystem health. We encourage researchers holding additional Australian zooplankton data to contact us and contribute their data to the data set so we can periodically publish updates.</p> <p> <i>Key words</i>: <i>biogeography; continuous plankton recorder; copepod; diversity; integrated marine observing system (IMOS); plankton; species richness; zooplankton abundance.</i> </p> </div