Water Chemistry and Shallow Water Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) Profiles for select locations across Batangas, Philippines from 2012 to 2015

The water chemistry data described here are from discrete water samples collected by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), to assess the seawater carbonate systems at fixed climate survey sites located in coral reef habitats in the Philippines in 2012, 2013, and 2015. Climate sites were established by CREP to assess multiple features of the coral reef environment (in addition to the data described herein) over time. In 2015, conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) casts were also performed to characterize the spatial structure of the physical and chemical properties of the ocean environment influencing the living coral reef resources. These water chemistry and CTD data provide a baseline for tracking reef carbonate system changes due to globally increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

To survey water chemistry, SCUBA divers collected two discrete water samples from each site; one at the reef and one at the surface directly above the reef. The samples were processed by CREP and sent to NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) to be analyzed for total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). From these constituents, alongside temperature, salinity, and depth data, other parameters of the seawater carbonate system can be calculated.

CTD data are collected by lowering the CTD in a profiling mode from a small boat, resulting in vertical profiles (max 18 meter depth, downcast only) of water column conductivity, temperature, and pressure. Vertical profiles of temperature, salinity, and turbidity resulting from CTD casts provide indicators for local seawater chemistry changes.

In addition to these discrete samples, water samples were collected as part of CREP's ocean acidification diurnal suite, which also includes vertical profiles from CTD casts, current direction and magnitude from an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, and pH from an SeaFET sensor. The data associated with the diurnal suite are documented and archived separately; The data associated with the diurnal suite is documented and archived separately with metadata available at https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/45954.

Laboratory experiments reveal calcification rates of crustose coralline algae (CCA) are strongly correlated to seawater aragonite saturation state. Predictions of reduced coral calcification rates, due to ocean acidification, suggest that coral reef communities will undergo ecological phase shifts as calcifying organisms are negatively impacted by changing seawater chemistry.

The Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) at NOAA Fisheries is conducting in-situ climate monitoring across the U.S. Pacific Islands Region. Climate monitoring provides a comprehensive view of climate change impacts on coral reef ecosystems and helps identify areas of resilience and vulnerability. The key indicators used to identify and monitor climate-driven trends include 1) thermal stress caused by changes in sea temperature, 2) ocean acidification resulting from changes in carbonate chemistry, and 3) ecological impacts by collecting data on coral growth rates and community structure to understand the impacts of thermal stress and ocean acidification on the ecosystem. This particular dataset for the Philippines is part of a 3-year project ("Climate, Biodiversity and Fisheries in the Coral Triangle: Embracing the E in Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management") implemented by CREP. This project was funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Mission Asia (RDMA) as part of the U.S. Coral Triangle Initiative, with additional support from the Coral Triangle Support Partnership and USAID Philippines. The goal of the project was to build on CREP's expertise to provide tools and information about climate change, ocean acidification, and their impacts on biodiversity and fisheries that could inform and be incorporated into an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) for the Philippines. CREP worked with local governments, communities, and NGOs to build science capacity by establishing robust observing capabilities and providing hands-on training to initiate collection of climate science information for the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines that can be used toward adaptive EAFM.

CREP traveled to the Verde Island Passage region of the Philippines in 2012 to deploy moored oceanographic (subsurface temperature recorders [STRs]) and ecological (calcification accretion units [CAUs] and autonomous reef monitoring structures [ARMS]) instrumentation, to collect surface and bottom water samples, and to conduct benthic photo-quadrat surveys, which included the collection of benthic images; in 2013 to collect additional water samples; and again in 2015 to recover the instrumentation and to collect another round of water samples and benthic images and to conduct diel surveys. All activities were conducted by SCUBA divers at five locations in the municipalities of Mabini and Tingloy, including Batong Buhay, Koala Reserve Area, Arthur's Reef, Twin Rocks, and Batalang Bato. At each of the five locations, a shallow and deep survey site was established for a total of 10 survey sites.

Updated and revised in October 2021 due to errors in salinity used to calculate Total Alkalinity, Dissolved Organic Carbon, pCO2, pH, and Aragonite Saturation State in previous analysis.

Initially published CTD and carbonate chemistry data together in 2017 with accession number 0162832 (deprecated as of November 2021). CTD and water sample carbonate chemistry datasets are now under separate accessions.

Water chemistry data were analyzed by PMEL. CTD data include metadata for each observation and conductivity, temperature, and pressure observations with calculated depth, salinity and density.

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

Mabini and Tingloy in Batangas, Philippines

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NOAA Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

ESD welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. ESD has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with ESD principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by ESD, proper acknowledgement of both ESD and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, ESD requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the ESD Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP). The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors.”

Data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

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These oceanographic data are PRELIMINARY data and have not been screened for accuracy. NOAA can not be held liable for use of these data in a manner other than for perusal of preliminary oceanographic data for scientific research on coral reefs ecosystems.

Please cite PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) when using the data.

Suggested citation:

Ecosystem Sciences Division; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2021). Water chemistry and Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) profiles at coral reef sites in Batangas, Philippines from discrete surface and bottom water samples collected from 2012 to 2015. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/45817.

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Raw water sample and CTD profile data are downloaded as .HEX files, processed using Sea-Bird Scientific SBE Data Processing Software and the R package "oce", and saved as .CNV and .CSV files. The processed files have been transitionally migrated to the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) enterprise Oracle database in preparation for the implementation of adding OCC data entry into the existing Oracle APEX mission application. Data are then extracted from the Oracle database and distributed to the NOAA ocean data archive by region and year.

Water samples: Accuracy of laboratory analysis is explained in detail in Dickson et al (2007).

Since the carbonate system can vary on a diurnal scale and not all samples are taken at the exact same time of day, considering the time a sample was taken may be important for some analyses. However, because all samples are taken between 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM, variation due to diurnal change is expected to be small.

Water Samples: All analyzed samples are included. -9.99-E29 values in the data, where they exist, indicate that this observation/analysis was not conducted for the sample record where it appears.

CTD: The data are believed to be complete. -9.99-E29 values in the data, where they exist, indicate that this observation/analysis was not conducted for the sample record where it appears.

"Raw" data without calculations are provided, as many different parameters, in addition to aragonite saturation state, can be calculated from the data provided, and researchers may be interested in different parameters.

The same methods of data collection are used at each surveyed site. The data are very consistent, sample collection and processing protocols are adhered to very rigorously, both in the field and in the lab.

CTD: The data is quality controlled by CRED personnel after the data is downloaded from the instrument.

Water Samples: PMEL conducts quality assurance and quality control on their analyses; the precision and accuracy of DIC analyses are on the order of ± 0.05% and TA analyses are on the order of ± 0.1% in a laboratory setting.

Data quality flags are provided by NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and included in the dataset. These flags indicate if something went wrong with the analytical equipment or with the processing of the samples. PMEL uses the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) data quality flag system, where '2's correspond to good values, '3's to questionable data, and '4's to bad data. Most water samples collected by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) and analyzed by PMEL in this dataset received a '2' data quality flag and the remainder were flagged as questionable ('3').

The data resides in an Oracle enterprise database which is maintained and regularly backed up by PIFSC ITS.

NOAA's Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) assembles carbonate chemistry information from discrete seawater samples analyzed for two parameters: 1) Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC), which in some literature is defined as Total Carbon (CT), and 2) Total Alkalinity (TA or AT).

To examine carbonate chemistry, discrete seawater samples were taken at fixed climate sites from 2012-2015 in the Philippines. Shallow CTD profiles were also collected from climate survey sites in Batangas, Philippines (Mabini and Tingloy) by the PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division in 2015 to measure conductivity, temperature, pressure, depth, salinity, and density.

All carbonate system collection and measurement methodologies follow the protocols accepted by the greater scientific community and outlined in Dickson et al. (2007)