Dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nitrogen (DON) and phosphorus (DOP) are important pieces of the biogeochemical cycles in coastal waters, with DOC constituting one of the Essential Ocean Variables. Many of us have Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) measurements sitting around in spreadsheets, some published and some unpublished, which may eventually be lost or misplaced. This data properly compiled and freely available would be a valuable resource for the global research community. We have already collected a considerable dataset of DOM values (~5k measurements) but would like to develop this with the DOM research community into a comprehensive global database of observations.

The objectives of the database are to: 1) gather DOM coastal data to have a baseline for future studies (e.g. looking at global environmental change), 2) publish an updated version of the database periodically (e.g. every 5 years) to determine global trends of DOM levels in coastal waters. With this in mind a first data paper describing the database will be submitted to the journal Earth System Science Data, and all data contributors will be co-authors on this manuscript. Therefore, if you have any coastal water DOC and/or DON and/or DOP measurements from estuaries (salinity > 0.1) to the shelf (water depth < 200 m), however old, few or many, we would like to include them in the database. Please also note that we would like to receive the data by the latest on the 15^th of April 2022.

To contribute to the effort, please:

• Use the excel spreadsheet (Global coastal water DOM database) and return it to us with your data. We prefer to receive these as Excel or text files, but we can deal with most other files types if necessary. Spreadsheets of data should be row-wise (i.e. each data point on its own row).
• Let us know of any possible open data repository for DOM measurements, which we can access ourselves.

Please send this information to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We would like to include, where available, other relevant information such as: the georeference (latitude and longitude); time stamp (day, month, year); depth of sample collection; bottom depth; salinity; temperature etc. and some meta-data concerning analyses and potential references. At a minimum, we need geographic coordinates, time stamp, salinity, temperature and depth for the obtained data. Please contact us to discuss possible inclusion of your data in the database, if you know of data that you think could be included, or if you have suggestions of how to make this database a reality. 

We appreciate your time and effort to make this database happen!

Sincerely,

Christian Lønborg, Cátia Carreira, Xosé Antón Álvarez-Salgado

CONTACT US

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.