Data from: Continental margin sediments underlying the NE Pacific oxygen minimum zone are a source of nitrous oxide to the water column

This study was conducted in the NE Pacific Ocean, on the outer continental shelf and upper continental margin off south-central Vancouver Island, Canada. We collected replicate sediment cores at 200, 475 and 850 m depth. Sampling stations were chosen to cover the in situ bottom water dissolved oxygen gradient, ranging from the well-oxygenated outer shelf at 200 m to the oxygen minimum zone core at 850 m. We used a microsensor approach to measure porewater N2O and O2 vertical distributions in initial and incubated cores from each sampling location. We incubated 3 cores from each location using the collected bottom water and kept them under near-in situ dissolved O2 and temperature conditions in the ship-board cold room for 24-36 hours to reestablish steady-state conditions prior to sediment profiling and subsequent modelling. N2O production and consumption rates and O2 consumption rates were estimated from measured concentration profiles using mathematical modelling.