Metadata Report for BODC Series Reference Number 1989287

• Metadata Summary

• Problem Reports

• Data Access Policy

• Narrative Documents

• Project Information

• Data Activity or Cruise Information

• Fixed Station Information

• BODC Quality Flags

• SeaDataNet Quality Flags

Metadata Summary

Problem Reports

No Problem Report Found in the Database

Data Access Policy

Open Data supplied by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

You must always use the following attribution statement to acknowledge the source of the information: "Contains data supplied by Natural Environment Research Council."

Narrative Documents

Skalar San+ Autoanalyzer

The San+ Autoanalyzer is an Automated Wet Chemistry Analyzer (Continuous Flow Analyzer) which has been designed as a modular system to measure a variety of water chemistry characteristics, such as nutrient concentrations in seawater. Individual modules are tailored to specific needs. It uses Continuous Flow Analysis (CFA), allowing up to 16 analytical measurements to be made on a single sample simultaneously. The system comprises a sampler, chemistry section, detector and specialist software.

Chemistry section
The San+ includes a chemistry section which has hundreds of applications. It houses up to five chemistry cartridges with built-in dosing pump and air injection systems, up to five interchangeable cartridges with build-in photometric detectors and five separate waste receptacles. The throughput of the analyser depends upon application and can vary from 25 to 120 analyses per hour. It has a double diameter pump deck for accurate dosing with 32 pump tubes, two separated pump decks for 2 x 2 channel concept, and controlled synchronised eight channel air injection with separate built-in compressor for increased flow stability and fast start-up. It has easy access to chemistry cartridges with flexible ultra low carry-over connections between dialysers, reactors, coils, flow cells and other components, leak detection, 3-cuffs long life pump tubes, and has manually operated and automatic rinsing valves for easy automatic start up and overnight operation.

Detectors
The San+ range of detectors comprises dual channel colorimetric detectors, the unique matrix correction detector with automatic background correction for difficult sample matrixes, but also covers a range of detectors for I.R., U.V., fluorimetry, ISE, flame photometry, refractometers, density meters, etc.

Software
The San+ 'Flow Access' windows software package controls the complete analyser, with auto start-up, function control, and auto-scaling, pre-and post run sample dilutions, result calculation and statistics. Up to 16 channels can be handled simultaneously, with multiple samplers, and chemistries can be grouped for analysis.

The San+ is also known as San++.

Niskin Bottle

The Niskin bottle is a device used by oceanographers to collect subsurface seawater samples. It is a plastic bottle with caps and rubber seals at each end and is deployed with the caps held open, allowing free-flushing of the bottle as it moves through the water column.

Standard Niskin

The standard version of the bottle includes a plastic-coated metal spring or elastic cord running through the interior of the bottle that joins the two caps, and the caps are held open against the spring by plastic lanyards. When the bottle reaches the desired depth the lanyards are released by a pressure-actuated switch, command signal or messenger weight and the caps are forced shut and sealed, trapping the seawater sample.

Lever Action Niskin

The Lever Action Niskin Bottle differs from the standard version, in that the caps are held open during deployment by externally mounted stainless steel springs rather than an internal spring or cord. Lever Action Niskins are recommended for applications where a completely clear sample chamber is critical or for use in deep cold water.

Clean Sampling

A modified version of the standard Niskin bottle has been developed for clean sampling. This is teflon-coated and uses a latex cord to close the caps rather than a metal spring. The clean version of the Levered Action Niskin bottle is also teflon-coated and uses epoxy covered springs in place of the stainless steel springs. These bottles are specifically designed to minimise metal contamination when sampling trace metals.

Deployment

Bottles may be deployed singly clamped to a wire or in groups of up to 48 on a rosette. Standard bottles and Lever Action bottles have a capacity between 1.7 and 30 L. Reversing thermometers may be attached to a spring-loaded disk that rotates through 180° on bottle closure.

IBIS cruise D350 CTD Nutrient sampling document

Originator's data acquisition and analysis

The objective of cruise D350 to the Irminger Basin in the North Atlantic was to measure the concentrations of the inorganic nutrients: TON, silicate and phosphate using segmented flow analysis. Unfortunately, water samples were only analysed for TON and silicate and samples were frozen for phosphate analysis back at the National Oceanography Centre.

Analysis for micro-molar concentrations of nitrate and nitrite (TON), and silicate was undertaken on a Skalar San+ segmented flow autoanalyser following methods described by Kirkwood (1996). Samples were drawn from Niskin bottles on the CTD into 25ml sterilin coulter counter vials and kept refrigerated at approximately 4°C until analysis, which commenced within twelve hours. An artificial seawater matrix (ASW) of 40g/litre sodium chloride was used as the intersample wash and standard matrix. The nutrient free status of this solution was checked by running Ocean Scientific International (OSI) low nutrient seawater (LNS) on every run. A single set of mixed standards were made up by diluting 5mM solutions made from weighed dried salts in 1 litre of ASW into plastic 1 litre volumetric flasks that had been cleaned by soaking in MQ water. The concentration of the standards was tested on every run by analysing diluted OSI certified standards, one low concentration sample (1.1µM for TON and silicate) and one high concentration sample (32.0µM for TON and silicate).

Data processing was undertaken using Skalar proprietary software and was done within 24 hours of the run being finished. The wash time and sample time were 90 seconds; the lines were washed daily with 10% Decon.

BODC data banking procedures

The data were originally submitted to BODC in an Excel file named 'D350_bottle_compendium_031011.xlsx'. This file contains a single worksheet where all metadata and data (CTD sensor data as well as discrete sample data) associated with each Niskin bottle fired throughout all casts of the cruise are stored. Phosphate data were not submitted to BODC.

Parameter details are displayed in the table below:

No flags were submitted by the originator and no flags have been added by BODC.

References

Kirkwood, D. S. (1996), Nutrients: Practical notes on their determination in seawater, ICES Tech. in Mar. Environ. Sci. Rep. 17, Int. Counc. for the Explor. of the Seas, Copenhagen.

Project Information

Iron Biogeochemistry in the high latitude North Atlantic - Irminger Basin Iron Study (IBIS)

Funding

Funding was provided by NERC, in the form of four standard (full Economic Cost - fEC) grants with a total value of £528,607. The project was a study of the iron (Fe) biogeochemistry in the high latitude North Atlantic, with the results providing a better understanding of the role that nutrients like iron play in the growth of phytoplankton cells in the ocean. The gathered data were intended to help computer modellers to design improved climate models that would allow for better predictions of the extent of climate change over the next hundreds of years.

Project dates - 21 June 2007 to 08 November 2013.

Background

With the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations throughout the world, the importance of carbon-ingesting marine plants, such as phytoplankton is becoming more important. As phytoplankton take up atmospheric carbon dioxide, they are helping to reduce the atmospheric concentration. Recently it has been discovered that the phytoplankton in many of the world's oceans are lacking in iron. For example, in the Southern Ocean, phytoplankton cell growth is limited by very low iron concentrations. Thus, they do not remove as much carbon dioxide as they could. Recent studies have suggested that iron may even play a role in the phytoplankton growth in the high latitude North Atlantic, which was thought to be iron replete.

Objectives

The main objective of this project was to study the iron biogeochemistry of the high latitude North Atlantic, assess whether community productivity in parts of the high latitude North Atlantic was iron limited following the annual spring bloom, and to determine the factors which lead to this situation. This project studied whether iron was limiting phytoplankton growth in the study area, by undertaking two cruises and taking samples of water, sedimenting material, and atmospheric dust and rain. The project also directly investigated whether iron is limiting the growth of phytoplankton in water samples from the study area.

Participants

• University of Southampton, School of Ocean and Earth Science.
• University of Liverpool, Earth Surface Dynamics.
• University of Essex, Biological Sciences.
• University of East Anglia, Environmental Sciences.

• Prof. Eric Achterberg, University of Southampton, School of Ocean and Earth Science (Principal Investigator)
• Dr. Gary Fones, University of Portsmouth, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Dr. Richard Sanders, National Oceanography Centre, Science and Technology
• Dr. Christopher Mark Moore, University of Southampton, School of Ocean and Earth Science
• Prof. Richard Geider University of Essex, Biological Sciences
• Prof. Tim Jickells, University of East Anglia, Environmental Sciences
• Prof. Ric Williams, University of Liverpool, Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences

Methodology

• Took samples of water, sediments, atmospheric dust and rain.
• Calculated the supply ratios of iron (Fe) to nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and carbon (C) to the surface oceans and in sedimenting material.
• Calculated the oceanic transfers of these elements using models.
• Assessed whether iron was limiting phytoplankton growth using both models and water samples analysis.

More information can be found within the Gateway to Research website.

Fieldwork

Two research cruises

• RRS Discovery D350 - 26 April 2010 to 09 May 2010. Departed from Govan, UK and arrived in Reykjavík, Iceland. Study area: North Atlantic Ocean - Irminger and Iceland Basins. Principal Scientist: Dr. Mark Moore, University of Southampton.
• RRS Discovery D354 - 10 July 2010 to 11 August 2010. Departed from Avonmouth, UK and arrived in Birkenhead, UK. Study area: North Atlantic Ocean - Iceland and Irminger Basins. Principal Scientist: Prof. Eric Achterberg, University of Southampton.

Instrumentation

• Stainless Steel CTD rosette
• Titanium CTD rosette
• VM ADCP 75 kHz
• VM ADCP 150 kHz
• Stand Alone Pump Systems (SAPS)
• PELAGRA - Neutrally Buoyant Sediment Traps
• Trace metal clean tow fish
• Seasoar with CTD, fluorometer and Laser Optical Plankton Counter (LOPC)
• Zooplankton nets
• Underway - Navigation, surface and meteorology

Data Activity or Cruise Information

Data Activity

BODC Sample Metadata Report for D350_CTD_Ctd_S_006

Please note:the supplied parameters may not have been sampled from all the bottle firings described in the table above. Cross-match the Sample Reference Number above against the SAMPRFNM value in the data file to identify the relevant metadata.

Related Data Activity activities are detailed in Appendix 1

Cruise

Complete Cruise Metadata Report is available here

Fixed Station Information

No Fixed Station Information held for the Series

BODC Quality Control Flags

The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:

SeaDataNet Quality Control Flags

The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:

Appendix 1: D350_CTD_Ctd_S_006

Related series for this Data Activity are presented in the table below. Further information can be found by following the appropriate links.

If you are interested in these series, please be aware we offer a multiple file download service. Should your credentials be insufficient for automatic download, the service also offers a referral to our Enquiries Officer who may be able to negotiate access.