Seasonal riverine discharge drives large intra-annual variations in temperature (13-29°C) and salinity (3-30) at two sites in the Swan River estuary. Anoxia in bottom waters associated with a salt wedge increased ammonium and phosphate concentrations, especially at the deeper site. The dataset, sourced from Geoscience Australia Data, examines major ions, nutrients, and chlorophyll a to assess nutrient limitations on phytoplankton growth.
Use Cases
- Modeling the impact of seasonal discharge on water column stratification based on temperature and salinity data.
- Analyzing nutrient limitation for phytoplankton based on reported nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratios (3-8).
- Investigating anoxia-induced nutrient release from sediments based on ammonium and phosphate concentration changes.
- Studying the role of groundwater flow in nutrient transport from sediment porewater to the water column.
Strengths
- Data captures distinct physico-chemical identities of surface and bottom waters, a key feature of stratified estuaries.
- Measurements span a wide salinity range (3-30), indicating sampling across different estuarine conditions.
- Analysis includes multiple related variables: major ions, nutrients, chlorophyll a, temperature, and turbidity.
Limitations
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing on two specific sites.
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia Data
- Collection Method
- Seasonal sampling at two sites in the upper Swan River estuary.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-30 14:07:00.370982; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Swan River estuary, Western Australia