The Dead Zone

Data Files

The Data:
The data provided for these activities were downloaded from the U.S. Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Nutrient Enhanced Coastal Ocean Productivity Program (NECOP) website, www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/necop/. The website has several data sets which consist of physical, chemical and biological parameters from cruises in the Gulf of Mexico. A condensed version of the July 23-28, 1993, data is provided with these materials (see file names below). The data set has been reduced and formatted in Microsoft Excel to be student and teacher friendly for these activities. The activities are set up as pencil and paper exercises. However, some of the graphing activities can be conducted using Excel graphing options. Data sets from additional years on the NECOP website can also be downloaded and used for class activities on the dead zone.

July 23-28, 1993 Cruise Data

The data for these activities for classroom use are condensed data that were collected on a Gulf of Mexico Cruise from July 23-28, 1993. The data were acquired from the NECOP cruise file found at www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/necop/. The condensed data set contains 10 variables, which are listed below.

Variables and units in the condensed data files are:

Date = month/day/year
Trn. = Transect
Stn. = Station
Lat. = Latitude in degrees: minutes. hundredths of a minute (deg:min)
Long. = Longitude in degrees: minutes. hundredths of a minute (deg:min)
Depth in meters (m)
D.O. = Dissolved oxygen in milligrams per liter (mg/L)
Sal. = Salinity in parts per thousand (ppt.)
Temp. = Temperature in degrees Centigrade (Cent.)
Density (Sigma-t)

Gulf of Mexico Transects on this data set are:
Transects A, A’, B, C, D, D’, E, F, G, H, I, J, K and Y.
Data for each transect is in a separate file. Station numbers that are contained in the 1993 data files are listed below. All files contain the above listed variables.

Excel Data Files	Printer-Friendly PDF
Tran A July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/24/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (7 pages)	Tran A July 1993.pdf
Tran A’ July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/24/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (5 pages)	Tran A’ July 1993.pdf
Tran B July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/25/93 Stations: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 (5 pages)	Tran B July 1993.pdf
Tran C July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/25/93 Stations: 1, 3, 4, 6B, 7, 8A, 9, 9A, 10 (7 pages)	Tran C July 1993.pdf
Tran D July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/26/93 Stations: 1, 1N, 2, 3, 4, 5 (4 pages)	Tran D July 1993.pdf
Tran D’ July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/25/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4 (4 pages)	Tran D’ July 1993.pdf
Tran E July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/26/93 Stations: 1, 2, 2A, 3, 4, 5 (5 pages)	Tran E July 1993.pdf
Tran F July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/26/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (6 pages)	Tran F July 1993.pdf
Tran G July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/27/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6A (6 pages)	Tran G July 1993.pdf
Tran H July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/27/93 Stations: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (6 pages)	Tran H July 1993.pdf
Tran I July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/28/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (3 pages)	Tran I July 1993.pdf
Tran J July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/28/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (4 pages)	Tran J July 1993.pdf
Tran K July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/29/93 Stations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (2 pages)	Tran K July 1993.pdf
Tran Y July 1993.xls data collected on: 7/23/93 Stations: 1, 2 (3 pages)	Tran Y July 1993.pdf

Other Files

The data files for the classroom activities contain a portion of the data from files that can be found on the NECOP website, www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/necop/. The original data on the NECOP website include 30 fields of variables. For the ease of classroom activities for the physical aspects of the dead zone, several of these fields were deleted for the classroom data files. The NECOP data file includes data fields of transect, station, latitude (degrees: minutes. hundredths of a minute), longitude (degrees: minutes. hundredths of a minute), maximum depth (meters), local time, secchi disc depth (meters), depth of CTD p-sensor (meters), dissolved oxygen (mg/L), salinity (ppt), in vivo fluorescence (volts), temperature (Centigrade), conductivity (S/m), % light transmission, density (sigma-t), dissolved oxygen (% saturation), altimeter (ft), ship’s fathometer (meters), mean chlorophyll A (µg/L), mean phaeopigments (µg/L), mean total pigments (µg/L), mean of Fo/Fa ratios, ammonia (µg-at/L), nitrate (µg-at/L), nitrite (µg-at/L), nitrite + nitrate (µg-at/L), phosphate (µg-at/L), silicate (µg-at/L), and auto salinity (ppt).