Development State: Experimental
Power: via shore
Installed and operated by: Oregon Health & Science University

Data Availability: SATURN-01 observations are available through the Internet both (1) in near real-time as raw data and (2) with a lag time of about one month as quality controlled data. All data from the SATURN observation network is available through both (1) the CMOP Data Center and (2) NANOOS, the Pacific Northwest regional federation of NOAA's Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). Prior to its transition to the SATURN observation network in 2008, the station was designated AM012 and was a part of the CORIE network.

Data is openly available, pursuant of the disclaimer below:

Disclaimer: All data are collected as a part of a scientific project, and are provided “as is,” without explicit or implicit warranty of accuracy or suitability for any purpose.  User is fully responsible for using the data, and should ensure suitable quality assessment prior to use. Data should not be used in any situation involving the possibility of loss of life or injury, loss of property or financial loss.

QA/QC Protocols: QA/QC for the profiler variables are in development.

SATURN-01 is maintained as core CMOP infrastructure via a National Science Foundation (NSF) cooperative agreement.  The Murdoch Charitable Trust provided major instrumentation support and the station is owned and operated by Point Adams Packing Company. All SATURN stations contribute data to the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS).

Credits: We recommend the following citation for all publications using CMOP data: "This study utilized data collected at the SATURN observation network, operated by the Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction (CMOP), under the direction of Dr. Antonio Baptista and with support from the National Science Foundation (OCE-0424602), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA Fisheries and NANOOS), U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration, Office of Naval Research, and the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust."

Baseline parameters
The SATURN endurance biogeochemical stations are designed to provide river-to-shelf gradients of the following set of baseline water parameters: conductivity, temperature, salinity via conductivity and temperature, fluorescence, turbidity, colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), dissolved oxygen (DO) and nitrate.

However, because SATURN is still evolving, sensors for some of the baseline parameters may not yet be installed at all endurance biogeochemical stations. Status per station:

Installed sensors are occasionally offline, for maintenance or otherwise. Check real-time status at each station’s web page.

Data Quality Assurance Methods: CTs
Salinity and temperature data collected at the SATURN stations has been quality checked and corrected using the following methods. There are 2 sources of data, download and telemetry, and they have slightly different processing methods. Download data is collected from the instruments when they are removed from an installation. Telemetry data is received in real time across the radio network. Where available, download data is provided in preference over telemetry data. 

Time
Data downloaded from an instrument relies on the accuracy of the computer used to initialize the instrument (this is checked using standard NTP processes) and drift of the instrument's internal clock. Data received through the telemetry network will show an error if the receiving computer loses contact with an NTP server for a significant amount of time, or if the radio link itself becomes broken or intermittent.

Data from download and telemetry are compared to assess the quality of the time stamp, any errors that cannot be resolved beyond 5 minutes result in the entire data point being removed from the record.

Temperature
The quality of the temperature data is confirmed by post-deployment instrument calibration checks.
The quality of the data during a deployment is also confirmed by cross comparisons of the temperature of fresh water across multiple stations. Agreement within 0.2 C for fresh water temperature is seen across multiple instruments. The significance of the failure of a particular instrument to meet this criteria is judged on a station by station basis.
Temperature data has also been checked for extreme outliers. Extreme outliers are removed from the final data.

Salinity
The major source of error for salinity data is biofouling of the conductivity sensor. Biofouling produces an increasingly depressed salinity reading, and can produce errors greater than 50% of the actual salinity. Development of automated detectors of biofouling in the data record is ongoing. Currently, the detection of biofouling is performed manually by comparing the slope of the temperature-salinity diagram for a particular instrument to the expected slope of the estuary wide temperature-salinity diagram.

Salinity is also checked for extreme outliers. Extreme outliers and data determined to be subject to biofouling are removed from the final data.