Water Column Sonar Data Collection. National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA

Water column sonar data, the acoustic back-scatter from the near-surface to the seafloor, are used to assess physical and biological characteristics of the ocean including the spatial distribution of plankton, fish, methane seeps, and underwater oil plumes.

In collaboration with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the University of Colorado Boulder, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) established a national archive for water column sonar data. This project entails ensuring the long-term stewardship of well-documented water column sonar data, and enabling discovery and access to researchers and the public around the world.

Data providers include NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER), NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS), Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R), U.S. academic and private institutions, and international groups.

This data set comprises the water-column sonar data archived at NCEI in a more readily accessible media. Data provided to NCEI are in their raw format. Processing routines are being applied to a subset of the archive, specifically focusing on Simrad EK60 single and multiple frequency datasets. Ping alignment, noise removal algorithms (De Robertis & Higgenbottom, 2007; Ryan et al., 2015), and bottom detection algorithms are applied to the raw data binned into one hour intervals using Echoview (Myriax, v.10). The processed data are exported as a CSV for each interval and each frequency.

 
Citation proposal
National Centers for Environmental Information (2011) . Water Column Sonar Data Collection. National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA. https://services.mspdata.eu:/geonetwork/srv/api/records/85ba4d2f-c151-43f5-a0af-23d5fe03cb97

Simple

Date ( Publication )
2011-05-11
Identifier
85ba4d2f-c151-43f5-a0af-23d5fe03cb97
Purpose
The intent of the Water Column Sonar Data Collection is to archive and make available water column sonar data to researchers and the public for a wide variety of uses such as fisheries studies, ocean properties and seafloor characteristics.
Credit
NOAA
Status
On going

  Author

Website
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ngdc.html  
Thèmes Sextant ( Theme )
  • /Imagery/Acoustic Imagery/Sonar
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ( Theme )
Mission Atlantic - Case Studies ( Theme )
  • South Brazilian Shelf
Mission Atlantic - BODC Parameters ( Theme )
  • /Physical oceanography/Acoustics , /Biological oceanography/Other biological measurements
Mission Atlantic - Data type (DMP) ( Theme )
  • Acoustic data
Mission Atlantic - Work Package ( Theme )
  • WP5 Assessing state, drivers and tipping points , WP3 Pelagic Mapping
Mission Atlantic - Resources ( Theme )
  • Data
Other constraints
Data is publicly available and free to use
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Oceans
N
S
E
W


Geometric object type
Curve
OnLine resource
Water Column Sonar Data Map Viewer  
OnLine resource
Data collection  
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Statement

Raw archived data were collected using a variety of vessel-mounted sonars with Kongsberg's EM 122 (12 kHz) and EM 302 (30 kHz), Simrad's EK60 (18-710 kHz, split beam), ME70 (70-120 kHz, can be split beam), and EK80 (18-710 kHz, split beam and broadband) being the most common. The configuration of each cruise's sonar system (e.g., beam type and angle) can be found in the file metadata.

File names contain the start time for that file, and often include a preceding tag for that cruise. The timestamp in UTC follows the convention: ‘D’YYYYMMDD’-T’hhmmss. For example, “SaKe_2013-D20130522-T134850”, indicates a files from a 2013 SaKe cruise and the start of the file is May 22, 2013 at 13:48:50 (UTC).

Description
The primary data in this collection consists of raw instrument files that were submitted to NGDC for archive. in addition, ancillary files such as water column profile data are also included. these files were submitted to NGDC through hard drive delivery, R2R or ftp. When possible, checksum values are compared to verify file integrity before being added to the archive. No other processing or quality control steps are applied ot data.
Rationale

Metadata

File identifier
85ba4d2f-c151-43f5-a0af-23d5fe03cb97   XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Date stamp
2021-12-08T11:28:03
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115:2003/19139 - SEXTANT
Metadata standard version
1.0

  Point of contact

Website
https://sextant.ifremer.fr/eng  
 
 

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