Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorbance from lagoon, ocean, and river sites along the Alaska Beaufort Sea coast, 2021-ongoing

Multiple water types (river, lagoon, ocean) from the North Slope of Alaska and nearshore Beaufort Sea are sampled seasonally by the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER (BLE LTER) Core Program to investigate biogeochemical linkages between terrestrial, lagoon, and open ocean ecosystems. Water samples from multiple depths are collected during full ice cover (April), ice break-up (mid-June to early July), and open water (late July and August) periods, filtered, and analyzed for light absorption spectra within 24 hours of collection. Wavelength-specific light absorption coefficients are reported between 200 and 600 nanometers. The data is organized in "long" or "tidy" format, with columns of station, date, wavelength, and absorption. Please see included MakeColumnsAsWavelengths.R, MakeColumnsAsDates.R, and ReshapeDataInExcel.txt for some common ways to reorganize the table for further CDOM analysis.

In 2022, data from 2019 were removed due to quality issues (please see revision 1 of this dataset for 2019 CDOM values). For users who may have used 2019 data from this dataset, there are additional files to inform decisions going forward. "BLE_LTER_CDOM_2019_sample_flags.csv" lists which 2019 samples are entirely unreliable, versus usable with caution. "BLE_LTER_CDOM_2021_blank_mean_sd_absorptions.csv" lists mean and standard deviations at each wavelength from all blanks taken in 2021; this is meant to give info on the instruments used and will not be updated further. Please see the methods section for more information on 2019 data.