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.
This metadata record represents Report 1 for the 2007/2008 research season, as no samples were collected nor sensors deployed, the other reports have not been generated.
