Scottish Environmental Protection Agency Marine National Environmental Monitoring Buoy Network (1996 -)
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) Marine National Environmental Monitoring Buoy Network provides real time, high frequency environmental data from strategic locations around the Scottish coast, as part of SEPA obligations to monitor the marine environment. The monitoring buoy network has been in place in some places from as early as 1996 with more buoys being deployed for ongoing measurements of the marine environment. Continuous monitoring equipment gathers dissolved oxygen, water temperature, salinity and chlorophyll-a data at regular intervals. The data is stored internally and downloaded at regular maintenance intervals. Data is collected by SEPA from monitoring buoys, mostly every 15 minutes. The data was submitted to the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) for "data banking." Data has been removed as part of the SEPA quality control procedure leading to periods of absent data. This also occurs through power failure or lack of deployment. Further quality control by BODC will flag suspect data. The data is used to assess the state of the marine environment at representative locations. Salinity is used to indicate changes in water masses. Salinity decreases as freshwater inputs increase and oxygen is more soluble in freshwater than seawater. Water temperature is closely linked to seasonal changes and oxygen becomes less soluble as the water temperature increases. Chlorophyll-a is an indicator of the biomass of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton blooms are common occurrences at the start and end of the growing season in spring and autumn however excessive phytoplankton is indicated by enhanced abundance throughout the growing season (90 percentile concentration >15 µg/l measured from April to September). Excessive phytoplankton growth may cause an undesirable disturbance to the ecosystem if the decaying algae remove oxygen from the water column and sea bed as a result of microbial breakdown. Dissolved oxygen is one of the most important indicators of the health of a water body and high levels are needed to support a variety of marine life. Dissolved oxygen concentrations are affected by salinity, temperature and phytoplankton growth. Dissolved oxygen produced by photosynthesis may result in supersaturation (>100%) during the growing season. Dissolved oxygen is removed by the microbial breakdown of organic matter.
Simple
- Alternate title
- British Oceanographic Data Centre record 1048SEPA_MNEM_NETWORK
- Date (Publication)
- 2018-05-18
- Date (Creation)
- 2014-06-30
- Date (Revision)
- 2017-01-30
- Identifier
- http://www.bodc.ac.uk/ / EDMED6098
Owner
Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Stirling Office
-
Unknown
(
Unknown
)
https://www.sepa.org.uk/
Strathallan House
,
Stirling
,
FK9 4TZ
,
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1786 452595
https://www.sepa.org.uk/
Originator
Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Stirling Office
-
Unknown
(
Unknown
)
https://www.sepa.org.uk/
Strathallan House
,
Stirling
,
FK9 4TZ
,
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1786 452595
https://www.sepa.org.uk/
Custodian
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Director
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Distributor
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Director
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
- Maintenance and update frequency
- asNeeded As needed
- SeaDataNet PDV
- INSPIRE themes
- MEDIN metadata record availability
- Vertical Coverages
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- No limitations apply
- Other constraints
- Data are freely available
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- No conditions apply
- Spatial representation type
- Text, table
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Biota
- Oceans
N
S
E
W
))
- Geographic identifier
-
North Sea
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Geographic identifier
-
Firth of Clyde
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Geographic identifier
-
Firth of Forth
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Begin date
- 1996-04-30
- End date
- 2021-12-20 After
- Unique resource identifier
- urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
- Codespace
- OGP
- Distribution format
- OnLine resource
-
BODC online data delivery service
National Oceanographic Database data delivery service; pre-filtered for the data collection.
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Explanation
- BODC protocols are based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model enabling BODC to iterate towards compliance with the on-going evolution and development of community requirements including FAIR (Findable,Accessible,Interoperable,Reusable), TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User community, Sustainability, Technology) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics). Data managers quality assure submissions and assemble the metadata necessary for curation. Submissions (as received) are placed in a long-term accession and stored in triplicate across multiple sites. Appropriate data are transferred into a standard internal format with source variable names mapped to controlled vocabularies, documentation assembled, and metadata loaded into BODC databases. Access to these data is through direct request, the BODC website and through partner repositories such as SeaDataNet. Access control is attained by assigning a data policy to each set of data and this policy is used to administer access when data are requested. Discovery metadata is aligned with EU INSPIRE (through MEDIN) and SeaDataNet community standards. Data are converted to open community formats including Ocean Data View ASCII and SeaDataNet NetCDF, with data described using terms from the NERC vocabulary server. BODC submission agreements are documented on the BODC website and customer service is assured with a dedicated requests team that serve data following local regulations including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018 and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.
- Pass
- Yes
- Statement
- unknown
- File identifier
- 73da05bb6bf754899b308ad35637d178 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2021-12-20T06:31:16
- Metadata standard name
- MEDIN
- Metadata standard version
- 3.1.1
Point of contact
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Polly Hadžiabdić
(
Head of the BODC Requests Team
)
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
))
Provided by

Associated resources
Not available