Data to accompany "Exploring the Complexity of Ocean Acidification: An Ecosystem Comparison of Coastal pH Variability"

The goal of this project was to create a science lesson
at the middle school level with data illustrating the variablilty of pH and temperature
in nature. The lesson allows students to interpret pH data and gain
knowledge of abiotic and biotic processes that contribute to pH differences between
tropical, temperate and polar marine ecosystems. Students use what they have learned
to interpret data from a 'mystery' site and develop a hypothesis as to which ecosystem
the unknown data was collected from. The full cirriculum is described in Kapsenberg, L, AL Kelley,
LA Francis, and SB Raskin (2015) Exploring the complexity of
ocean acidification: an ecosystem comparison of coastal pH variability.
Science Scope 39(3): 51-60. doi: 10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_51 This dataset contains an Excel workbook with five worksheets: A "Readme" tab with citations for additional reading and data
attribution. Three time-series of pH and temperature from coastal locations: a
temperate kelp forest in the Santa Barbara Channel (Spring season, 2 months,
20 min interval). a coral reef near the island of Moorea, Tahiti (Summer
season, 3 weeks, 30 min interval), and the polar ocean of
Cape Evans, McMurdo Bay, Antarctica (Spring/Summer, 6 months, bi-hourly interval). A fourth worksheet contains data for a "mystery site" for student
examination. Data for the study were contributed by the Santa Barbara Coastal
LTER , Moorea Coral Reef LTER and
the G. Hofmann lab (University
of California, Santa Barbara) . Additional pH data are available from both
LTER sites. Antarctic data in this dataset are also available
from NSF's Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (see Cape Evans Mooring, 2012 ).