The MAREDAT global database of high performance liquid chromatography marine pigment measurements

Abstract

Abstract. A global pigment database consisting of 37 103 pigment suites measured by high performance liquid chromatography was assembled in support of the MARine Ecosytem DATa (MAREDAT) initiative. These data originate from 136 field surveys within the global ocean, were solicited from investigators and databases, compiled, and then quality controlled. Nearly one quarter of the data originates from the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV), with an additional 20% and 17% stemming from the US JGOFS and LTER programs, respectively. The MAREDAT pigment database provides high quality measurements of the major taxonomic pigments including chlorophyll a and b, 19'butanoyloxyfucoxanthin, 19'hexanoyloxyfucoxanthin, alloxanthin, divinyl chlorophyll a, fucoxanthin, lutein, peridinin, prasinoxanthin, violaxanthin and zeaxanthin, which may be used in varying combinations to estimate phytoplankton community composition. Quality control measures consisted of flagging samples that had a total chlorophyll a concentration of zero, had fewer than four reported accessory pigments, or exceeded two standard deviations of the log-linear regression of total chlorophyll a with total accessory pigment concentrations. We anticipate the MAREDAT pigment database to be of use in the marine ecology, remote sensing and ecological modeling communities where it will support model validation and advance our global perspective on marine biodiversity. The original dataset together with quality control flags as well as the gridded MAREDAT pigment data may be downloaded from PANGAEA: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.793246.

How Can Phytoplankton Pigments Be Best Used to Characterize Surface Ocean Phytoplankton Groups for Ocean Color Remote Sensing Algorithms?

“…Datasets that did not measure either or both of the divinyl chlorophylls (which are essential for separating Prochlorococcus from Synechococcus ) or did not separate lutein (which is found in only green algae) and zeaxanthin (which is found in red algae, green algae, and cyanobacteria) were not included in the final dataset. Taken together, these criteria eliminated many datasets from consideration that were included in previous global summaries [cf., Uitz et al, ; Peloquin et al, ; Swan et al, ]. Further, all degradation pigments (chllide, Phytin, and Phide) were removed from all further analysis as well as redundant calculated values (MVchla, Tchlb, Tchlc, and ABcaro), leaving seventeen accessory pigments and Tchla.…”

Vertical distribution of chlorophyll <I>a</I> concentration and phytoplankton community composition from in situ fluorescence profiles: a first database for the global ocean

“…2.3, FLA-VOR retrievals for the Southern, Arctic and Indian oceans are slightly less accurate than for the other basins; it is therefore possible that the estimation errors are greater in these areas. Moreover, this observation has to be nuanced considering the difficulties in retrieving accurate ocean color satellite [TChl] in these high-latitude environments (Gregg and Casey, 2004;Guinet et al, 2013;Johnson et al, 2013;Peloquin et al, 2013;Siegel et al, 2005;Szeto et al, 2011).…”

“…The vertical distribution of chlorophyll a can be estimated with greatest accuracy from the analysis of water samples by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC, Claustre et al, 2004;Peloquin et al, 2013). However, these in situ measurements are relatively scarce because their acquisition requires ship-based sampling and their analysis is costly.…”

Global Retrieval of Diatom Abundance Based on Phytoplankton Pigments and Satellite Data

“…The data were quality controlled in a way similar to the method used by Uitz et al [15] and Peloquin et al [19]: (i) Samples with accessory pigment concentrations below 0.001 mg/m 3 were set to zero, (ii) samples with TChla below 0.001 mg/m 3 and fewer than 4 accessory pigments were excluded. The TChla was defined as the sum of monovinyl Chla, divinyl Chla, Chla allomers, Chla epimers and chlorophyllidae.…”

“…A data set of phytoplankton pigment profiles measured with the High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) technique was supplemented with data obtained from the SeaWiFS Bio-optical Archive and Storage System (SeaBASS, [18]), Marine Ecosystem Data (MAREDAT, [19]), and from the individual cruises KEOPS ( [20]), Bonus Good Hope, ANT-XVIII/2 (EisenEx), ANTXXI/3 (EIFEX, [3]), ANT XXVI/3, ANT XXVIII/3, Sonne SO218 [21], Merian 18-3, Meteor 55 and Meteor 60. The pigments from the cruises Meteor 55, Meteor 60, ANT XXVI/3 and ANT-XVIII/2 were measured in accordance with the method described in Hoffmann et al [22] and for the cruises Merian 18-3 and ANT XXVIII/3 in accordance with that in Taylor et al [23].…”