Marine Biological and Chemical Data for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1990-Present

The Gulf of St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence Estuary contain discrete oceanographic, biological, and chemical data collected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It includes salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, nutrients, pH, and alkalinity measurements from water column samples taken from 1990 to two years prior to the present. Data originates from annual scientific missions, including weekly monitoring and multispecies surveys, and is updated annually.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term changes in water chemistry based on nutrient concentration time series.
• Analyzing seasonal and spatial patterns of chlorophyll-a concentration as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass.
• Studying dissolved oxygen dynamics and potential hypoxia in the estuary and gulf.
• Correlating biological variables with physical parameters from accompanying CTD profile data.

Strengths

• Data collection spans over three decades, from 1990 to two years prior to the present, enabling long-term trend analysis.
• Includes multiple key oceanographic variables: salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, and several nutrient concentrations.
• Data is sourced from structured annual scientific missions, including weekly monitoring and multispecies surveys.
• Annual synthesis reports on oceanographic conditions have been published since 2011, providing contextual analysis.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset represents averaged values from replicate samples, which may obscure original measurement variance.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Quebec region.

Collection Method

Samples taken at different depths in the water column during annual scientific missions, including weekly monitoring at fixed stations and multispecies surveys.

Time Range

1990 to two years prior to the present.

Freshness

Updated annually; last metadata update was 2026-05-05.

Geography

St. Lawrence Estuary, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Saguenay Fjord, and some non-routine survey areas.