MCR LTER: Coral Reef: Benthic Water Temperature, ongoing since 2005

A continuous time series of benthic water temperature is measured with bottom-mounted
thermistors at six sites around the shores of Moorea, on the fringing reef, backreef, and forereef.
The forereef temperature is recorded with SBE 39s or SBE 56s at 10, 20, 30 and 40 m,
starting between 2005 to 2007, except FOR00 starting in 2010. These are ongoing except the 40 m
deployments were discontinued after August 2019.

The backreef SBE 39s/56s are mounted on plates at 1 m depth at LTER 1 and at 2 m depth at the other five sites.

Onset HOBOs are deployed on the fringing reef at one shallow 1 m depth and one deeper depth
varying by site as follows: 6 m at LTER 1, 4 m at LTER 2, 7 m at LTER 3, 6 m at LTER 4,
3 m at LTER 5 and 4 m at LTER 6. The mounting plate is fixed to the reef and depths do not vary through time.

These depths are not measured by the thermistors and should be considered categorical.

Throughout the timeseries, temperature measurements have been taken every 2 minutes by SBE 39s
and SBE 56s, and every 8 minutes by the Onset HOBOs. Prior to July 2021 temperature data were subjected
to a low-pass filter to remove noise and temperature was resampled to a 20 minute time step.
Beginning in July 2021 data are raw temperature values sampled every two minutes (SBE 39s and SBE 56s)
or eight minutes (Onset HOBOs) depending on the instrument.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under
Grant No. OCE 16-37396 (and earlier awards) as well as a generous gift from the Gordon and
Betty Moore Foundation. Research was completed under permits issued by the French Polynesian
Government (Délégation à la Recherche) and the Haut-commissariat de la République en
Polynésie Francaise (DTRT) (Protocole d'Accueil 2005-2023). This work represents a
contribution of the Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) LTER Site.