Scottish Coastal Observatory data is published under a digital object identifier for each monitoring site. No published data will be modified, but additional years of data will be added to resources after publication once Quality control is completed.
We therefore recommend that citations include information about the range of data used when citing the dataset (e.g. date or other parameter range, including filtering by quality flags)
Phytoplankton samples are examined by counting cells. Numbers are converted to number of cells per liter or presence/absence for inter-sample comparison.
The data columns in this resource are:
Site: The name of the Scottish Coastal Observatory site
Method: Shorthand for analysis method. For some sites, methods are combined in a single resource, but in others each analysis method are reported separated. Analysis methods include F400 = First 400 cells, FOV = Fields of View analysis, Presence Absence = Flogs for presence (1) or absence(0) of species, Target species = specific analysis for targeted and listed species in analysis only.
WaterSampleID: Identifier for the water sample that analysis was conducted on.
SamplingDate: Date on which the water sample was collected
Species: Scientific species name
AphiaID: The Life Science Identifier (LSID) or Ahpia Identifier that allow for easy look up of marine species on https://www.marinespecies.org/
CellsPerLiter: The count of a given species in a sample converted into cells per liter based on the coutn of organisms and the volume of sample analysed.