From Australian Oceans Data Network
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The Australian Phytoplankton Database (1844 - ongoing) - abundance and biovolume

Created 24/06/2025

Updated 24/06/2025

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There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate over 3,600,000 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://imos.aodn.org.au/), allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels. There is a static snapshot of the database as at March 2016 (http://dx.doi.org/10.4225/69/56454b2ba2f79), and this has been documented in a Scientific Data Publication. This metadata record provides access to the dynamic (most recent) version of the database and was based on the following CSIRO metadata record: https://marlin.csiro.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/search?uuid=1836cea6-317d-1608-e053-08114f8c81ba.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title The Australian Phytoplankton Database (1844 - ongoing) - abundance and biovolume
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/e5e06822-2ea4-4560-9307-c3cb0d7b79a0
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
claire.davies@csiro.au
Reference Period 02/01/1844
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "The Australian Phytoplankton Database (1844 - ongoing) - abundance and biovolume". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/the-australian-phytoplankton-database-1844-ongoing-abundance-and-biovolume