Articles | Volume 15, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5701-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5701-2023
Data description paper
 | 
18 Dec 2023
Data description paper |  | 18 Dec 2023

The Western Channel Observatory: a century of physical, chemical and biological data compiled from pelagic and benthic habitats in the western English Channel

Andrea J. McEvoy, Angus Atkinson, Ruth L. Airs, Rachel Brittain, Ian Brown, Elaine S. Fileman, Helen S. Findlay, Caroline L. McNeill, Clare Ostle, Tim J. Smyth, Paul J. Somerfield, Karen Tait, Glen A. Tarran, Simon Thomas, Claire E. Widdicombe, E. Malcolm S. Woodward, Amanda Beesley, David V. P. Conway, James Fishwick, Hannah Haines, Carolyn Harris, Roger Harris, Pierre Hélaouët, David Johns, Penelope K. Lindeque, Thomas Mesher, Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, Joana Nunes, Frances Perry, Ana M. Queiros, Andrew Rees, Saskia Rühl, David Sims, Ricardo Torres, and Stephen Widdicombe

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Cited articles

Álvarez, E., Lopez-Urrutia, A., and Nogueira, E.: Improvement of plankton biovolume estimates derived from image-based automatic sampling devices: application to FlowCAM, J. Plankton Res., 34, 454–469, 2012. 
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Atkinson, A., Polimene, L., Fileman, E. S., Widdicombe, C. E., McEvoy, A. J., Smyth, T. J., Djeghri, N., Sailley, S. F., and Cornwell, L. E.: Comment. What drives plankton seasonality in a stratifying shelf sea? Some competing and complementary theories, Limnol. Oceanogr., 63, 2877–2884, 2018. 
Atkinson, A., Lilley, M. K., Hirst, A. G., McEvoy, A. J., Tarran, G. A., Widdicombe, C., Fileman, E. S., Woodward, E. M. S., Schmidt, K., and Smyth, T. J.: Increasing nutrient stress reduces the efficiency of energy transfer through planktonic size spectra, Limnol. Oceanogr., 66, 422–437, 2021. 
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Short summary
Western Channel Observatory is an oceanographic time series and biodiversity reference site within 40 km of Plymouth (UK), sampled since 1903. Differing levels of reporting and formatting hamper the use of the valuable individual datasets. We provide the first summary database as monthly averages where comparisons can be made of the physical, chemical and biological data. We describe the database, illustrate its utility to examine seasonality and longer-term trends, and summarize previous work.
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