Reduced Data Cards

The Reduced Data Card Collection contains digitized data from reduced data cards, capturing chemical research data from the multiple scientific expeditions that took place yearly for a particular vessel. These yearly expeditions are called “cruises”. Each cruise visits multiple locations during the expeditions, which are called “stations”.

The goal of the Reduced Data Card Collection is to present the data recorded on the cards in a more useable format. The collection contains both Excel (*.xlsx) and comma- separated values (CSV) files containing the header data and measurement data for each station. By including CSV files in the collection, the data from the cards can be easily imported into other programs and data formats. The card data can then be used for countless scientific processes like forecasting, predictive analytics, modeling, and visualizations.

The Reduced Data Card Collection contains data from 1931 to 1963, spanning years and decades, allowing patterns to emerge in the collection data and when combined with existing ocean scientific data.

Structure of the Reduced Data Cards

The reduced data cards are divided into two section, the header section and the measurement data section.

Reduced Data Cards ReadMe file: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/70957

Reduced Data Cards Application: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/70966

Reduced Data Cards Codes and Symbols file: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/70967

Header Section

• Station Number
• Cruise Number
• Vessel
• Date
• Latitude and Longitude
• Depth
• Time
• Weather Conditions (using Beaufort Weather Codes)
• Wind Direction and Speed
• Sea Conditions

Measurement Data Section

• Depth
• Temperature
• Salinity
• Additional data such as seawater density, oxygen levels, nitrate and nitrite levels, phosphate levels, nannoplankton levels, etc.

File Organization

The Reduced Data Card Collection can be thought of as a hierarchy with vessels conducting cruises and cruises containing station data. The collection will allow you to filter the collection by vessel and cruise.

There are up to 6 files associated with each cruise:

• PDF File: A PDF file containing a scanned image of all Reduced Data Cards for a given cruise
• Excel File: An Excel file containing a worksheet for header data for each station
• CSV File: A CSV file containing a CSV for header data for each station
• ZIP File: A ZIP file containing a set of CSV files with the header data for each data card
• Excel File: An Excel file containing measurement data for the various stations (not available if no stations were assigned)
• ZIP file: A ZIP file containing a set of CSV files with measurement data for each data card (also not available if no stations were assigned)

Additional Resources

To enhance data accessibility and usability, the collection includes:

• An Excel file that acts as an application allowing you to navigate the header and scientific data across multiple cruises.
• A key for the codes and symbols used on the cards, such as the Beaufort Weather Codes, which provide weather condition notations.

The Beaufort Weather Codes is a weather notation coding system of abbreviations which are used within the reduced data cards. The coding abbreviations contain a one, two, or three- character alphabetical code describing the state of the sky and weather, even describing cloud conditions and precipitation types. See Beaufort Weather Codes document (Beaufort Weather Codes.pdf) for details.

Vessels: Atlantis