Numerous papers have reported on the effects of ocean acidification on organisms and communities but few have offered details on the carbonate chemistry, irradiance and other ancillary data. Additionally, parameters of the carbonate system have often been reported on different pH scales (NBS, total, free, or sea-water) using different sets of equilibrium constants. This makes data comparison and meta-analysis difficult. The EU project EUR-OCEANS initiated a data rescue and transformation project which is now continued by EPOCA, the European Project on Ocean Acidification.
The goal is (1) to collect data on the carbonate chemistry, processes and ancillary data that have already been published, (2) to analyze and transform the data if needed, and (3) to make the data available to the whole community through the EPOCA database hosted in a World Data Center (Pangaea).
The present status of the database is as follows:
– 52 data sets from 77 publications are available
– 16 data sets will soon be uploaded
– requests were sent to the corresponding author of 54 publications
– 36 data sets are lost or could not be obtained from the authors
The EPOCA project hopes that this service will be useful to the community and encourage authors to provide their data once their papers are accepted. The database can be accessed on the EPOCA web site. Additional information can be obtained from Anne-Marin Nisumaa (nisumaa@obs-vlfr.fr) the EPOCA observational data manager.
