Station/Environmental Data Sets from Pump Casts

Land-Margin Ecosystem Research in the Columbia River Estuary is an interdisciplinary approach to investigating couplings between hydrological, geochemical and ecological processes within estuarine turbidity maxima. General hydrographic profiles indicate the nature of physical, biological, and particle stratification in the water column. From these data, the principle investigators determined depths to sample during pump casts. In addition, profiles of hydrographic and biophysical parameters may be used to explore potential links between or among these parameters and to verify instrument accuracy. The specific data set description is the following: Pump casts were conducted immediately following a CTD cast and are, thus, cross-referenced by CTD data parameters. Pump samples were collected from usually three depths per cast (near-surface, mid-depth, near-bottom), with PIs responsible for analyzing “core” parameters. These data are critical for many aspects of the study as they are used to construct dynamic models of the estuarine turbidity maxima at different tidal and flow regimes. See Simenstad et al. (1994) for a project overview.