Despite their importance for research and environmental protection, there's still a shortage of high quality and high-resolution temperature, pH, and oxygen data particularly in shallow coastal habitats. We monitor five important environmental parameters (i.e., depth, temperature, salinity, pH, and dissolved oxygen) at 30 minute intervals in Mumford Cove, CT (41 degrees 19'25"N, 72 degrees 01'07"W), a small (2 km N-S × 0.5 km E-W), shallow (1-5 meters), cone-shaped embayment opening to northeastern Long Island Sound, with protected marsh habitat along its western side, marsh and beach habitat along its eastern side, and an extensive seagrass (Zostera marina) cover. Continuous monitoring is achieved by swapping identical and recalibrated probes (Eureka Manta Sub2) every 3-5 weeks.

Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

Since April 2015, pH, DO, temperature, and salinity measurements have been taken in 30 min intervals in Mumford Cove, CT, United States. This is a shallow cove that is typical for the area.

This dataset includes records from April 14, 2015 to December 9, 2022.

A complete technical description of the pH, DO, Temp, depth, and salinity sensors can be found at http://www.waterprobes.com/#!water-quality-sensor-specifications-/c11g

Monitoring website: https://befel.marinesciences.uconn.edu/monitoring/

All measurements were made with Eureka Manta Sub2 probes (www.waterprobes.com). The measurement interval was 30 minutes. All measurements were made in Mumford Cove, CT, ~ 0.5 meters above the sandy bottom. Deployment time of each sensor varied between 3-6 weeks. All probes were calibrated prior to deployment for salinity, pH, 100% air-saturated water oxygen. The probe was attached to a local subsurface buoy.

pH: calibrated with 3-point, NIST certified buffers, accuracy +/- 0.1, precision: 0.01, automatic temperature correction
Optically Measured Dissolved Oxygen (HDO): calibrated with 100% air-saturated water
Salinity: Calibrated with FisherScientific Conductivity standard 50,000 uS/cm

Data Processing:
QA/QC consisted of identifying and deleting salinity data that 'jumped' within a single 30 minute interval more than 1 salinity unit. pH was corrected for linear drift, using the post-calibration offset.

BCO-DMO Processing Notes:
Version 1:
(version 1 includes data from April 2015 to June 2016)
- reformatted date to yyyy-mm-dd; added date/time column in ISO8601 format;
- replaced spaces with underscores in the location name;
- filled blank cells with "nd" ("no data").

Version 2:
(version 2 includes data from April 2015 to February 2020)
- 2020-March-20: appended data from second dataset submission (monitoringMC_02).

Version 3:
(version 3 includes data from April 2015 to December 2022)
- replaced dataset with the new version, which includes all previous data and extends the sampling period to December 2022;
- converted dates to ISO 8601 format and added a column for UTC time zone;
- renamed fields to comply with BCO-DMO naming conventions.

Coverage: Eastern Long Island Sound, CT, USA

Description from NSF award abstract:
Coastal marine ecosystems provide a number of important services and resources for humans, and at the same time, coastal waters are subject to environmental stressors such as increases in ocean acidification and reductions in dissolved oxygen. The effects of these stressors on coastal marine organisms remain poorly understood because most research to date has examined the sensitivity of species to one factor, but not to more than one in combination. This project will determine how a model fish species, the Atlantic silverside, will respond to observed and predicted levels of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxygen (O2). Shorter-term experiments will measure embryo and larval survival, growth, and metabolism, and determine whether parents experiencing stressful conditions produce more robust offspring. Longer-term experiments will study the consequences of ocean acidification over the entire life span by quantifying the effects of high-CO2 conditions on the ratio of males to females, lifetime growth, and reproductive investment. These studies will provide a more comprehensive view of how multiple stressors may impact populations of Atlantic silversides and potentially other important forage fish species. This collaborative project will support and train three graduate students at the University of Connecticut and the Stony Brook University (NY), two institutions that attract students from minority groups. It will also provide a variety of opportunities for undergraduates to participate in research and the public to learn about the study, through summer research projects, incorporation in the "Women in Science and Engineering" program, and interactive displays of environmental data from monitoring buoys. The two early-career investigators are committed to increasing ocean literacy and awareness of NSF-funded research through public talks and presentations.

This project responds to the recognized need for multi-stressor assessments of species sensitivities to anthropogenic environmental change. It will combine environmental monitoring with advanced experimental approaches to characterize early and whole life consequences of acidification and hypoxia in the Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia), a valued model species and important forage fish along most of the US east coast. Experiments will employ a newly constructed, computer-controlled fish rearing system to allow independent and combined manipulation of seawater pCO2 and dissolved oxygen (DO) content and the application of static and fluctuating pCO2 and DO levels that were chosen to represent contemporary and potential future scenarios in productive coastal habitats. First CO2, DO, and CO2 × DO dependent reaction norms will be quantified for fitness-relevant early life history (ELH) traits including pre- and post-hatch survival, time to hatch, post-hatch growth, by rearing offspring collected from wild adults from fertilization to 20 days post hatch (dph) using a full factorial design of 3 CO2 × 3 DO levels. Second, the effects of tidal and diel CO2 × DO fluctuations of different amplitudes on silverside ELH traits will be quantified. To address knowledge gaps regarding the CO2-sensitivity in this species, laboratory manipulations of adult spawner environments and reciprocal offspring exposure experiments will elucidate the role of transgenerational plasticity as a potential short-term mechanism to cope with changing environments. To better understand the mechanisms of fish early life CO2-sensitivity, the effects of temperature × CO2 on pre- and post-hatch metabolism will be robustly quantified. The final objective is to rear silversides from fertilization to maturity under different CO2 levels and assess potential CO2-effects on sex ratio and whole life growth and fecundity.

Related references:
Gobler, C.J. and Baumann, H. (2016) Hypoxia and acidification in ocean ecosystems: Coupled dynamics and effects on marine life. Biology Letters 12:20150976. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2015.0976

Baumann, H. (2016) Combined effects of ocean acidification, warming, and hypoxia on marine organisms. Limnology and Oceanography e-Lectures 6:1-43. doi:10.1002/loe2.10002

Depasquale, E., Baumann, H., and Gobler, C.J. (2015) Variation in early life stage vulnerability among Northwest Atlantic estuarine forage fish to ocean acidification and low oxygen Marine Ecology Progress Series 523: 145–156.doi:10.3354/meps11142