Data Used

Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) Realtime Water Level

CHS maintains a number of water level observation sites. Water level data are downloaded and compared to water levels at the nearest model grid point. Comparison in this document is for Sandy Cove from Aug 2017 - May 2018.

Citizen Science

The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, with the support of the Pacific Salmon Foundation, have volunteer citizen scientists to take CTD casts and water samples at various stations in the Strait of Georgia. Data collected include temperature and salinity for all stations and nitrate, silicon, and chlorophyll for select stations. These trips take place between February and October and was done for 2015, 2016, and 2017. The stations are grouped by region, which include Lund, Powell River, Irvine, Baynes Sound, Nanaimo, Campbell River, Steveston, Victoria, Cowichan Bay, and Ladysmith. The 2015 nutrient dataset and 2015, 2016, and 2017 CTD datasets were processed by Rich and additional edits were made by Colin of PSF and Elise. Datasets for 2016 and 2017 nutrients and 2015, 2016, and 2017 chlorophyll were also made available to us. Edits of these datasets were made by Colin of PSF and Elise.

Drifters

During various trips to the Salish Sea, drifters are deployed and left to drift. They are all tracked with GPS devices and sometimes are picked up by bystanders and returned. As of present, there have been 21 deployments in the Salish Sea and the Juan de Fuca, each releasing up to ten drifters.

Fraser Plume CTD casts

Three boat trips, lead by Elise, were made to take CTD casts and collect water samples of the Fraser River Plume on April 10, 2017, May 31, 2017, and November 1, 2017, thus spanning the different seasons in a year. Data collected include pressure, temperature, salinity, beam transmission, PAR (photosynthetically active radiation), fluorescence, oxygen, and turbidity. Processing of the water sample was done at (ask Elise) Using loadDataFRP from SalishSeaTools, a choice of the raw data, slightly cleaned up data, and data interpolated to the Salish Sea model depths can be loaded.

IOS research cruises

The Institute of Ocean Sciences make research cruises every year in the Strait of Georgia. Available to us, we have nutrient data from the start of 201702 hindcast to until the end of 2016.

NANOOS San Jaun Dataset

Downloaded from Nanoos, we have temperature and salinity data from the San Juans islands from fall 2014 - fall 2017.

ONC ferries

Since 2012, BC Ferry has been with ONC instruments to collect data. This data was recently made available on the SalishSeaCast ERDDAP server. Data collected include temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, turbidity and other variables along with their standard deviation and sample count. This particular ferry traveled from Tsawwassen to Duke Point (and back), crossing the Fraser River plume region. The data is collected every 1 minute.

ONC nodes

Refer to tidal current comparison.

Sentry Shoal

Temperature, salinity, and nitrate data at Sentry Shoal was made available to us by Stephanie King and Katie Pocock. The data was processed by Katie Pocock. The dataset covers most of 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Water quality buoy

A water quality buoy, maintained by Environment and Climate Change Canada and the BC Ministry of Environment, is located in the Fraser River. The raw data was processed by Rich and covers January 2009 to November 2017. Data collected include temperature, salinity, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, stream velocity, and some atmospheric fields such as wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, humidity, and pressure.