Water quality measurements in San Francisco Bay by the U.S. Geological Survey, 1969–2015

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains a place-based research program in San Francisco Bay (USA) that began in 1969 and continues, providing one of the longest records of water-quality measurements in a North American estuary. Constituents include salinity, temperature, light extinction coefficient, and concentrations of chlorophyll-a, dissolved oxygen, suspended particulate matter, nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, silicate, and phosphate. We describe the sampling program, analytical methods, structure of the data record, and how to access all measurements made from 1969 through 2015. We provide a summary of how these data have been used by USGS and other researchers to deepen understanding of how estuaries are structured and function differently from the river and ocean ecosystems they bridge. Design Type(s) time series design • observation design Measurement Type(s) chlorophyll a • dissolved oxygen concentration • waterborne particulate matter • photoabsorption • water salinity • temperature of water • nutrient level Technology Type(s) data acquisition system Factor Type(s) spatiotemporal_interval Sample Characteristic(s) San Francisco Bay • estuarine water Design Type(s) time series design • observation design Measurement Type(s) chlorophyll a • dissolved oxygen concentration • waterborne particulate matter • photoabsorption • water salinity • temperature of water • nutrient level Technology Type(s) data acquisition system Factor Type(s) spatiotemporal_interval Sample Characteristic(s) San Francisco Bay • estuarine water Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Scientific Data

• Publication date

  2017-08-08

• Fields of study

  Geology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/sdata.2017.98PMID 28786972PMCID 5548074
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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