Distribution of Water Masses on the Northeast U.S. Shelf: presentation slides and links to electronic notebook and code

Abstract

The water above the Northeast U.S Shelf is home to many different species, and environmental conditions can change the abundance and location of these species. Within our oceans are water masses, pockets of water with their own unique qualities i.e temperature, salinity, etc. The objective of this project was to develop a workflow to identify locations of water masses based on the R/V Endeavor research cruise data. The purpose of this research was to interpret shelf data in order to make analyses efficient for scientists of all professions. The software RStudio was used to create temperature and salinity plots based on the path of the cruise to identify the changes in these parameters. A plot was also created to map the different water masses based on the salinity readings. Users can use the scripts to identify water masses for data from a variety of different time periods, observe the changes and locations of the water masses, and help to understand the changes in biodiversity along the shelf. Link to electronic notebook html: https://ayanna421.github.io/water-masses/. Link to R markdown code: https://github.com/Ayanna421/water-masses. This is a final research presentation for a Northeast U.S. Shelf Long-Term Ecological Research (NES-LTER) project Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) in the 2020 Woods Hole Partnership Education Program (PEP).