Biodiversity data on microplankton in the Belgian part of the North Sea
- Partners: Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)
- Period: since May 2017
- Geographical coverage: Belgian Exclusive Economic Zone
- Taxonomic coverage: Microplankton, being a substantial part of phytoplankton. Find the complete list in this sheet
- Moratorium: None
- Data quality: Calibrated/Validated
How to interpret this dataset
Available columns
- Tripaction: Unique identifier to recognize actions taken aboard the RV Simon Stevin.
- Time: Time in UTC, beginning of sample timeperiod.
- Station: Name or code of sampling station or receiver code.
- Longitude: Center longitude in decimal degrees, WGS84.
- Latitude: Center latitude in decimal degrees, WGS84.
- Fluid Volume Imaged (ml): Total volume of subsample processed with the FlowCAM in mililitres.
- Sample Volume (ml): Total volume of the water sample in mililitres.
- Volume Filtered (l): Total volume of water filtered through the Apstein net in mililitres.
- Sample Dilution Factor: Dilution factor of the processed sample to obtain Particles Per Used Image (PPUI). Values between 1.10 to 1.20.
- Taxon: Taxonomic group of organisms or group of artefacts.
- Count: The exact number of specimens counted.
- Total Count: The exact number of specimens counted in the sample.
- Density (cell/l): Number of specimens per litre1.
- ActionType: The type of sampling equipment.
- Project: Project in charge of receiver deployments.
Abstract
In the framework of the Lifewatch marine observatory a number of fixed stations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) are visited on a monthly or seasonal basis using RV Simon Stevin. A grid of nine stations covers the coastal zone and are sampled monthly. Eight additional stations, located further at sea, are sampled on a seasonal basis. Samples are taken using a 55µm mesh size Apstein net and fixed in Lugol’s iodine solution. In the lab, the samples are processed using a VS-4 FlowCAM model at 4X magnification, size range imaged is 55-300µm. The identification of the image data is done with the use of a classifier and followed by a manual validation step. Since May 2017, this dataset provides micro- and phytoplankton observations, mainly covering diatoms, dinoflagellates and cilliates, for the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS).
Further information can be found in this link or in a Data Paper: LifeWatch observatory data: phytoplankton observations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea.
At the moment, corrections are being made to the FlowCAM dataset and pipeline. Most up-to-date information on sampling or processing protocols and taxonomic information of the classes used during validations can be found in the following links:
How to cite these data
Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), Belgium (2024): LifeWatch observatory data: phytoplankton observations by FlowCam imaging in the Belgian Part of the North Sea. https://doi.org/10.14284/650. Accessed through the LifeWatch Data Explorer / lwdataexplorer R package.
Availability:
This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Please acknowledge as: This work makes use of the LifeWatch observation data and infrastructure (provided by VLIZ) funded by Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) as part of the Belgian contribution to LifeWatch.
These data are also available in the R language with the lwdataxplorer package.
1 The formula linked in the datapaper that describes these data is not used anymore. The corrected formula used during the aggregations is:
Density = ConcentrationSample x SampleVolume(L) / VolumeFiltered(L)
Density = Count x SampleVolume(L) / FluidVolumeImaged(L) x VolumeFiltered(L) x SampleDilutionFactor