Pacific Coral Reef Water Chemistry from NOAA's Long-Term Monitoring

NOAA's National Coral Reef Monitoring Program provides water sample data to track the seawater carbonate system across Pacific Ocean reefs. Samples from the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and Pacific Remote Island Areas are analyzed for total alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon. These data establish a baseline for assessing changes due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Use Cases

• Calculating reef carbonate system parameters like pH and pCO2 from measured total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) columns.
• Assessing spatial variation in water chemistry by comparing samples collected at the reef, surface, and offshore from each monitoring site.
• Analyzing temporal trends in ocean acidification indicators across long-term monitoring sites in the Pacific.
• Modeling the relationship between measured water chemistry constituents and concurrent in-situ temperature, salinity, and depth data.

Strengths

• Data collection follows a standardized protocol with two to three water samples (reef, surface, offshore) per site, ensuring spatial resolution.
• Samples are analyzed by the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), a specialized facility for carbonate chemistry.
• The dataset supports NOAA's ongoing National Coral Reef Monitoring Program, indicating a commitment to long-term, consistent data collection.

Limitations

• Critical metadata such as row count, column names, file size, and license are unavailable across all platforms.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-04-01 on Data.gov appears to be a future date, indicating a potential metadata error or placeholder.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce, via the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD).

Collection Method

Water samples collected at existing long-term monitoring sites during NCRMP missions, processed by CREP, and analyzed for TA and DIC at NOAA PMEL.

Time Range

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Freshness

2026-04-01 15:15:29.658219 (Note: This is a future date, which may be an error.)

Geography

Coral reef ecosystems in the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas.