Trends and drivers of hypoxic thickness and volume in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: 1985-2018

Hypoxia is a major environmental issue plaguing the commercially and ecologically important coastal waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico. Several modeling studies have explored this phenomenon, but primarily focus on the areal extent of the mid-summer hypoxic zone. Research into the variability and drivers of hypoxic volume and thickness is also important in evaluating the seasonal progression of hypoxia and its impact on coastal resources. In this study, we compile data from multiple monitoring programs and develop a geospatial model capable of estimating hypoxic thickness and volume across the summer season. We adopt a space-time geostatistical framework and introduce a rank-based inverse normal transformation to simulate more realistic distributions of hypoxic layer thickness. Our findings indicate that, on average, there is a seasonal lag in peak hypoxic volume and thickness compared to hypoxic area. We assess long-term trends in different hypoxia metrics (area, thickness, and volu..., The data sets in the repository are raw simulations of a geostatistical model developed to calculate area, volume and thickness of hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The simulations are for dissolved oxygen and thickness at a 3 day time step across a 5 meter square grid in the study area. For more details on the study area and resolution of the grid please refer to the published manuscript. , , # Data from: Trends and drivers of hypoxic thickness and volume in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: 1985-2018

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83tw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83tw)

## Description of the data and file structure

The following data are raw simulations of dissolved oxygen (DO) and thickness of hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico derived using space-time geostatistical model developed in the above manuscript. These raw simulations can be processed using the code files from the repository ([10.5281/zenodo.13101750](https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13101750)) to derive summaries of area and volume and also visualize the results to determine trends in space and time. 

For files in zip file thickness.zip, the first column is the date number, the second column corresponds to easting, third column corresponds to northing and the fourth column corresponds to depth of the water column at the location. The remaining columns correspond to thickness simulation at th...