The Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) is a Sub-facility of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), which is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). IMOS is operated by a consortium of institutions as an unincorporated joint venture, with the University of Tasmania as Lead Agent. The primary focus is sustained observing of ocean properties and processes important to climate, carbon cycling, and ocean productivity.
SOTS consists of deep ocean moorings deployed in Subantarctic waters southwest of Tasmania, equipped with autonomous sensors and sample collectors. The SOTS moorings are serviced annually - the existing moorings are recovered and new moorings are deployed. Some sensor data is transmitted from the moorings via satellite in near real time. Other sensor data and samples are recovered during the annual service visit.
For each year, three reports are issued:
Report 1. Overview of mooring voyages, dates, locations, designs, instruments
Report 2. Samples from moored and shipboard sample collections
Report 3. Sensors mounted on the moorings moored and shipboard
These reports focus on metadata, i.e. descriptions of the moorings, sensors, samplers, and their deployment, recovery, processing, analysis and curation. Pointers are provided to supporting information from voyage reports and to on-line sources of the data. Shipboard sensor and sample measurements made during the service visits are also described.
Report 1. Overview - describes the deployment and recovery of the moorings. It provides their locations, drawings of their designs, and lists of each instrument deployed and the variables measured. It also summarizes ancillary measurements and sample collections made during the deployment and recovery voyages.
Report 2. Samples - describes 3 main types of samples and associated composition measurements:
1. Sediment trap samples collected by the Subantarctic Zone (SAZ) mooring.
2. Water samples collected by the RAS water sampler deployed on either the Pulse or Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) mooring, and collected by the TM sampler deployed on the SOFS mooring.
3. Samples collected with other devices during the SOTS service voyages, e.g. from CTD Niskin bottles, in-situ pumps, continuous plankton recorders, and nets.
Note that not all these sample types were collected in any given year.
Report 3.Sensors provides:
1. Metadata on the sensor types, mounting, set-up, data availability and QC. This information is organized in tables for each mooring.
2. Links to access on-line sensor data from all SOTS moorings in the 2006-2007 year.
3. Description of and links to shipboard sensors records used for comparison to the moored sensors - note that Report 1. Overview provides links for standard shipboard sensors, and here we focus on additional sensor efforts with value for SOTS mooring sensor evaluations.
This metadata record represents the reports for the 2006/2007 research season.
