Comparatively the ocean and inland waters are two separate worlds, with concentrations in greenhouse gases having orders of magnitude in difference between the two. Together they create the Land-Ocean Aquatic Continuum (LOAC), which comprises itself largely of areas with little to no data in regards to understanding the global carbon system. Reasons for this include remote and inaccessible sample locations, often tedious methods that require collection of water samples and subsequent analysis in the lab, as well as the complex interplay of biological, physical and chemical processes. This has led to large inconsistencies, increasing errors and inevitably leading to potentially false upscaling. Here we demonstrate successful deployment in oceanic to remote inland regions, over extreme concentration ranges with multiple pre-existing oceanographic sensors combined set-up, allowing for highly detailed and accurate measurements. The set-up consists of sensors measuring pCO2, pCH4 (both flow-through, membrane-based NDIR or TDLAS sensors), O2, and a thermosalinograph at high-resolution from the same water source simultaneously. The flexibility of the system allowed deployment from freshwater to open ocean conditions on varying vessel sizes, where we managed to capture day-night cycles, repeat transects and also delineate small scale variability. Our work demonstrates the need for increased spatiotemporal monitoring, and shows a way to homogenize methods and data streams in the ocean and limnic realms.
Canning A., Körtzinger A., Fietzek P. & Rehder G., in press. Technical note: Seamless gas measurements across Land-Ocean Aquatic Continuum – corrections and evaluation of sensor data for CO2, CH4 and O2 from field deployments in contrasting environments. Biogeosciences Discuss. Article.
