Oceanographic Data from Winter and Spring Circulation and Sediment Transport Studies in the Hudson Shelf Valley collected in December-April (1999/2000) and April-June 2006

FIELD PROGRAM: During the winter experiment in 1999-2000, six instrumented tripods (IDs 595, 597, 599, 601, 603 and 604) were deployed in and around the valley with upward looking ADCPs to capture the currents in the whole water column and Benthic Acoustic Stress Sensors (BASS) to quantify near-bottom water flow and sediment concentration. Adjacent moorings at the first 5 sites (IDs 594, 596, 598, 600, and 602) had Seabird Instruments at various depths, providing complementary data on water temperature, salinity, density and attenuation. During the spring experiment in 2006, one tripod (ID 816) was deployed at the same location 595 had occupied in winter 2000 with upward looking ADCPs to capture the currents in the whole water column and BASS to capture near-bottom flow and sediment concentration. A mooring and tripod (IDs 817, 818) were deployed further down the canyon to make the same suite of measurements described above. Each deployment was intended to obtain measurements to describe seasonal dynamics. Processing occurred in 2000 and 2006.

DATA PROCESSING: Data processing was conducted using the proprietary software for each instrument, and (or) specialized software developed by the USGS. The proprietary software was often used to download data from the instruments and export the data to ASCII-files. Post-processing of the raw binary or ASCII files was accomplished using USGS software developed in the MATLAB (http://www.mathworks.com/) programming language. Data were first decoded and calibrated from instrument-specific formats and units to the EPIC-standard NetCDF format (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/epic/) and scientific units. Data were carefully checked for instrument malfunctions and then edited. The beginning and end of each data series were truncated to remove data collected out of water. The data were carefully checked at each stage of processing. After final editing, the best basic version of the data file includes all variables recorded at the basic sampling interval with valid metadata. Best basic versions of all data files in NetCDF format are provided.

Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.32 flagged. This is necessary to enable the metadata to be successfully harvested for various data catalogs. In some cases, this meant adding text "Information unavailable" or "Information unavailable from original metadata" for those required fields that were left blank. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). The metadata date (but not the metadata creator) was edited to reflect the date of these changes. The metadata available from a harvester may supersede metadata bundled within a download file. Compare the metadata dates to determine which metadata file is most recent.

Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.32 flagged. This is necessary to enable the metadata to be successfully harvested for various data catalogs. In some cases, this meant adding text "Information unavailable" or "Information unavailable from original metadata" for those required fields that were left blank. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). The links to the experiment page had to be fixed in the Identification_Information section and the Distribution_Information section. Fixed the online link to a cross-reference. In the case of the depth resolution, the value of 9999 was entered to indicate that the original metadata did not contain the required information. The metadata date (but not the metadata creator) was edited to reflect the date of these changes. The metadata available from a harvester may supersede metadata bundled within a download file. Compare the metadata dates to determine which metadata file is most recent.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.