Water chemistry at coral reef sites in Timor-Leste from discrete surface and bottom water samples collected in 2013 and 2014

The water chemistry data described here are from discrete water samples collected by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) in 2013 and 2014 to assess the seawater carbonate systems primarily at fixed climate survey sites located in coral reef habitats in Timor-Leste. Climate sites were established by CREP to establish ecological baselines for climate change by measuring multiple features of the coral reef environment (in addition to the data described herein) over time. Water chemistry data for both 2013 and 2014 is only available for a subset of the established climate survey sites (5 of the 8 sites). In 2013, water samples were collected from a few random sites in addition to the samples collected at the climate survey sites.

SCUBA divers collected two discrete water samples from each site; one at the reef and one at the surface directly above the reef. In 2013 only, surface water samples were also collected ~1 km offshore from the survey site. 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 were calculated, including pH, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and aragonite saturation state.

The water chemistry data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

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. These water chemistry data for Timor-Leste, along with other data collected at the climate survey sites (water temperature, calcification rates, invertebrate biodiversity, and benthic cover, all archived separately), can be used to help scientists assess and understand how Timor-Leste's coral reefs are responding to ocean acidification.

Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. 2017. Interdisciplinary baseline ecosystem assessment surveys to inform ecosystem-based management planning in Timor-Leste: Final Report. Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, PIFSC Special Publication, SP-17-002, 234 p. https://doi.org/10.7289/V5/SP-PIFSC-17-002.

As the survey methods described and used herein are also implemented as part of the NOAA Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP)—an ecosystem-scale interdisciplinary coral reef monitoring program—the data from Timor-Leste are directly comparable to and informed by data collected by NOAA-CREP throughout the U.S. Pacific Islands and Territories. Furthermore, the methods used for establishing ecological baselines for climate change in Timor-Leste (Chapter 4) are being adopted and implemented at 21 sites across eight member states of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission within the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) region. These data provide a foundation for comparing the ecological baselines under current and future stresses associated with climate change in the Coral Triangle region.

In 2011, NOAA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Timor-Leste Mission formed a 5-year bi-lateral partnership agreement from 2012 to 2016, in support of the Government of Timor-Leste—particularly the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF)—by addressing significant information gaps in their nearshore marine ecosystems. Specifically, MAF asked NOAA to address the following questions:

1.Where are the nearshore marine resources?

2.What are the nearshore marine resources?

3.How are they changing over time and what threats are potentially causing these changes?

4.What approaches are needed to manage and conserve the nearshore marine resources?

With financial support from USAID and in-kind support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) conducted baseline ecosystem assessment surveys to inform ecosystem-based management planning in Timor-Leste. The primary activities conducted by NOAA to answer these questions included:

1.satellite mapping of nearshore habitats,

2.conducting coral reef ecosystem assessments,

3.establishing ecological baselines for climate change, and

4.building management capacity by developing a spatial data framework

The water chemistry data described herein resulted from the third activity to establish ecological baselines for climate change.

Updated in 2021 to revise data errors.

The archived data includes information about the samples collected, including location, date, depth, temperature, and sample type, as well as the measured and calculated water chemistry parameters including salinity, dissolved inorganic carbon, total alkalinity, pH, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and aragonite saturation state. Several parameters are also normalized/corrected for salinity (DIC, TA, pH, pCO2, and Aragonite Saturation State).

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.

Timor-Leste

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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 at coral reef sites in Timor-Leste from discrete surface and bottom water samples collected from 2013 to 2014. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/46163.

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Water Sample Data: Microsoft Access 2010

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 chemistry data is not provided for all sites where water samples were collected. While processing water samples or during laboratory analysis, any samples deemed unsuitable/poor quality were thrown out.

The same methods of data collection were used at each surveyed site within a survey year, though, there were minor differences in survey protocol between samples collected in 2013 and 2014 (see lineage/methodology section). The processed/analyzed data are very consistent, sample collection and processing protocols are adhered to very rigorously, both in the field and in the lab.

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 Program (CREP) 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 MS Access database, which is maintained and regularly backed up by PIFSC ITS.

NOAA 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).

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