Standardized Fields and Units
Below is a table of the standard field names and associated units for use in submitting data to the SeaBASS bio-optical archive. The field names are not case sensitive. Use the search bar or the find function in your browser to search the table for words or patterns found in the field names, units or descriptions. Please contact SeaBASS staff if you want to discuss adding new fields.
Special notes regarding wavelength-specific measurements: There are two different ways to indicate wavelengths (nm) in a SeaBASS file. If metadata such as date, location, or depth vary within the data, then append the wavelength number to the field name for every measurement combination. For example, downwelling irradiance ('Ed') measured at 412.3 nm is 'Ed412.3' (listed as separate columns alongside other Ed measurements, like Ed416.2, Ed419, etc.) Alternately, if date, location, and depth are assumed to be approximately constant for all measurements in the file, then use the field 'wavelength' to provide a column of the measured wavelengths and don't include them as part of the field names (this pivoted layout is commonly used for reporting spectrophotometric measurements or other measurements that use the data_type=scan keyword).
Two additional tables are provided below (Field Name Suffixes & Modifiers). The reusable naming conventions in those tables are used to create new field names without having to add dozens or hundreds of variations to the Table of Field Names and Units. For example, "_sd" (for standard deviation) appears in the table of suffixes and may be appended to any existing SeaBASS field name (e.g., "chl_sd" or "Rrs510_sd".) Similarly, field-specific names can be created ad infinitum using _bincount (i.e., number of averaged samples), and _quality. The table of modifiers allows extra information to be part of field names, typically to indicate versions of measurements that are either more specific or modified. For example, modifiers are used to denote size-fractionated measurements (see _#umfilt and _#umprefilt), specific excitation or emission wavelengths, or polarized measurements. Field names may be constructing by combing entries from multiple tables, with any applicable wavelength first, followed by "Modifiers", followed by a "Suffix".