Australia's continental-scale acoustic tracking database and its automated quality control process.

Our ability to predict species responses to environmental changes relies on accurate records of animal movement patterns. Continental-scale acoustic telemetry networks are increasingly being established worldwide, producing large volumes of information-rich geospatial data. During the last decade, the Integrated Marine Observing System's Animal Tracking Facility (IMOS ATF) established a permanent array of acoustic receivers around Australia. Simultaneously, IMOS developed a centralised national database to foster collaborative research across the user community and quantify individual behaviour across a broad range of taxa. Here we present the database and quality control procedures developed to collate 49.6 million valid detections from 1891 receiving stations. This dataset consists of detections for 3,777 tags deployed on 117 marine species, with distances travelled ranging from a few to thousands of kilometres. Connectivity between regions was only made possible by the joint contribution of IMOS infrastructure and researcher-funded receivers. This dataset constitutes a valuable resource facilitating meta-analysis of animal movement, distributions, and habitat use, and is important for relating species distribution shifts with environmental covariates.

A database of chlorophyll a in Australian waters.

Chlorophyll a is the most commonly used indicator of phytoplankton biomass in the marine environment. It is relatively simple and cost effective to measure when compared to phytoplankton abundance and is thus routinely included in many surveys. Here we collate 173, 333 records of chlorophyll a collected since 1965 from Australian waters gathered from researchers on regular coastal monitoring surveys and ocean voyages into a single repository. This dataset includes the chlorophyll a values as measured from samples analysed using spectrophotometry, fluorometry and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The Australian Chlorophyll a database is freely available through the Australian Ocean Data Network portal (https://portal.aodn.org.au/). These data can be used in isolation as an index of phytoplankton biomass or in combination with other data to provide insight into water quality, ecosystem state, and relationships with other trophic levels such as zooplankton or fish.

A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters.

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels.

Carbon and nitrogen fluxes across the Hebridean shelf break, estimated by a 2D coupled physical-microbiological model.

A two-dimensional coupled physical-biological model is described and used to compute the annual cycle of primary production across the Hebridean shelf and slope based on information collected during the Land Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS), with the focus on data for 1995. Calculations of modelled carbon and nitrate fluxes indicate an annual on-shelf near-surface flux of nitrate of 65 kmol N m(-1) year(-1) at the top of the slope (140 m deep) and an off-shelf near-bottom carbon flux of 23 kmol C m(-1) year(-1). Further down the slope (at 300 m deep) the on-shelf nitrate flux increased to 126 kmol N m(-1) year(-1) and the off-shelf carbon flux increased to 41 kmol C m(-1) year(-1). Carbon deposition to the sea floor was less than 0.4 mol C m(-2) year(-1) on the upper slope and 1.1 mol C m(-2) year(-1) lower down the slope, values which are four-fold lower than those inferred from benthic oxygen demand measurements made during the Shelf Edge Study but of similar magnitude to observations made during OMEX I.

Nutrient fluxes and budgets for the North West European Shelf from a three-dimensional model.

A three-dimensional ecosystem model of the NW European continental shelf is used to simulate the seasonal cycle of nutrients (N, P, Si) and primary and secondary production during 1995. Nutrient budgets within areas of the shelf are calculated and their component parts (advective, benthic, pelagic, riverine, recycling) are examined. Nutrient fluxes across sections of the continental shelf are also calculated and compared with previous modelled/observed flux values.

Modelling the global coastal ocean.

Shelf and coastal seas are regions of exceptionally high biological productivity, high rates of biogeochemical cycling and immense socio-economic importance. They are, however, poorly represented by the present generation of Earth system models, both in terms of resolution and process representation. Hence, these models cannot be used to elucidate the role of the coastal ocean in global biogeochemical cycles and the effects global change (both direct anthropogenic and climatic) are having on them. Here, we present a system for simulating all the coastal regions around the world (the Global Coastal Ocean Modelling System) in a systematic and practical fashion. It is based on automatically generating multiple nested model domains, using the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Coastal Ocean Modelling System coupled to the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model. Preliminary results from the system are presented. These demonstrate the viability of the concept, and we discuss the prospects for using the system to explore key areas of global change in shelf seas, such as their role in the carbon cycle and climate change effects on fisheries.