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The Coastal & Oceanic Plankton Ecology, Production & Observation Database (COPEPOD) strives to provide easy access to quality plankton data [see our online database] and prepared data products [see our global biomass fields]. An Interactive Atlas is also available, highlighting data coverage by major plankton groups. Every 2-3 years, a technical document (e.g., COPEPOD-2010, COPEPOD-2007, COPEPOD-2005) is created to summarize the full plankton database content and coverage and also presents the new methods or analysis applied to the database and data products.   For example, COPEPOD-2005 featured a significant improvement in methods and data coverage over the "WODB-2001 biomass fields (O'Brien et al. 2001)", while COPEPOD-2007 introduced an advanced data quality control method for plankton data.   COPEPOD-2010 offers a minor update to both the COPEPOD-2005 biomass fields and the COPEPOD-2007 quality control method.

COPEPOD-2010

"COPEPOD-2010" is the latest installment in the COPEPOD technical documentation series.   COPEPOD-2010 summarizes COPEPOD's data sources, contents, and methods as of December 2010. COPEPOD-2010 also introduces new "month-based" and "night/day differentiation" checks to the advanced quality control system introduced in COPEPOD-2007.   These parameters help further expand COPEPOD's capabilities for tracking down unit and translation errors in digitized historical plankton data. Finally, COPEPOD-2010 documents changes and additions to the active [2010] online interface and data set content summaries (e.g., the expanded cruise summaries, the expanded temporal coverage summaries, and more). More information on "COPEPOD-2010" is available right here.

COPEPOD-2007

The 2007 Tech Memo ( NMFS F/ST-34 ) is available right here. "COPEPOD-2007" is a NOAA technical memorandum which summarizes COPEPOD's data sources, contents, and methods as of December 2007.   This document also presents new advanced quality control methodology for tracking down unit and translation errors in historical plankton data. The COPEPOD-2007 electronic atlas is now part of the Interactive Atlas One of the biggest challenges to building a database of plankton sampled with a wide variety of sampling methods and sampling gear is checking the quality of the data.   This tech memo summarizes a new automated QC visualization technique now in use in COPEPOD.

COPEPOD-2005

"COPEPOD-2005" is a NOAA technical memorandum which summarizes COPEPOD's data sources, contents, and methods as of December 2005.   This document also presents a new methodology for creating global zooplankton biomass fields, including improved techniques for combining data from different sampling gear and measurement methods. The COPEPOD-2005 biomass fields are available here. When the results of the new methodology were compared to the World Ocean Database 2001 (WOD01) plankton fields, it was found that WOD01 had over-estimated zooplankton carbon mass by up to four times. The 2005 Tech Memo ( NMFS F/SPO-073 ) is available right here.

National Marine Fisheries Service  -  Science & Technology  -  Marine Ecosystems Division

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