High frequency monitoring of water quality in the North-Aquitanian estuaries: data from the Portets station

The French Atlantic coast hosts numerous macrotidal and turbid estuaries that flow into the Bay of Biscay that are natural corridors for migratory fishes. The two best known are those of the Gironde and the Loire. However, there are also a dozen estuaries set geographically among them, of a smaller scale. The physico-chemical quality of estuarine waters is a necessary support element for biological life and determines the distribution of species, on which many ecosystem services (e.g. professional or recreational fishing) depend. With rising temperatures and water levels, declining precipitation and population growth projected for the New Aquitaine region by 2030, the question of how the quality and ecological status of estuarine waters will evolve becomes increasingly critical. The MAGEST (Mesures Automatisées pour l’observation et la Gestion des ESTuaires nord aquitains) high-frequency monitoring of key physico-chemical parameters was first developed in the Gironde estuary in 2004 ; the Seudre and Charente estuaries were instrumented late 2020. First based on real-time automated systems, MAGEST is now equipped by autonomous multiparameter sensors. Depending of the stations, an optode is also deployed to secure dissolved oxygen measurement. By the end of 2020, MAGEST had 12 instrumented sites.

Portets is a measuring station located in the upper Gironde estuary (Garonne subestuary, about 20 km upstream of the Bordeaux metropolis.

Disciplines

Chemical oceanography

Keywords

estuary, observing system, high frequency, MAGEST, Gironde, Seudre, Charente, salinity, turbidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, subsurface measurement levels, Portets, MAGEST, Garonne

Location

46N, 44.6S, 0.2E, -1.3W

Devices

The measurements were done using a multiparameter sensor, called SAMBAT, developed by NKE Instrumentation (France). The measured parameters are temperature (−-5 to +35°C; ± < 1%), salinity (range 0.1 -42; ± < 5%), turbidity (Turner Designs CYCLOPS-7; 0 - 3000 NTU; ± < 5%), dissolved oxygen (0 - 200 %;  ± 5 ).

The data were qualified according three categories : 1 - Good data, 3 - Probably good data, 9 - Missing value. Missing data are replaced by the value “-9999”.

Data

Alternative access to data

FileSizeFormatProcessingAccess
Salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and temperature measured of subsurface water in Portets station
1 MoCSVQuality controlled data
How to cite
Schmidt Sabine, The Magest Consortium (2021). High frequency monitoring of water quality in the North-Aquitanian estuaries: data from the Portets station. SEANOE. https://doi.org/10.17882/80130

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