Beaufort Sea Zooplankton Species Composition from 2003-2004

4208 records document the overwintering dynamics of 61 zooplankton species and taxa in Franklin Bay, southern Beaufort Sea. The data was collected by the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES) at weekly intervals from December 2003 to May 2004. SCIOPS is the organization responsible for this dataset.

Use Cases

• Analyze weekly abundance trends for dominant copepod species like Calanus glacialis and Metridia longa over the winter-spring transition.
• Validate acoustic or video plankton recorder data by comparing with direct species composition records for 61 identified taxa.
• Calibrate NPZD models using species-specific distribution data to improve simulations of the southern Beaufort Sea ecosystem.
• Correlate zooplankton vertical distribution data with carbon flux measurements from sediment trap studies in the region.

Strengths

• Contains 4208 individual species observation records.
• Covers 61 unique zooplankton species and taxa identified in the region.
• Provides weekly sampling resolution over a 6-month period from December to May.

Limitations

• Sample size is limited to a single overwintering station in Franklin Bay.
• The surface first 10 meters of the water column were not sampled, creating a data gap.
• Data is temporally limited to the 2003-2004 winter season.

Provenance

Source

Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES) via NASA Earthdata.

Collection Method

Samples collected with a multi-sampler Hydrobios equipped with nine 200 μm mesh nets, deployed from the moonpool of the CCG icebreaker Amundsen.

Time Range

2003-12-09 to 2004-05-29

Freshness

null

Geography

Franklin Bay, southern Beaufort Sea.