Reporting Decimal Line.Sta Numbers.

Abstract

Historically, when designing the original CalCOFI Line.Stations pattern, the transect lines were plotted perpendicular to the coastline with .0 decimal accuracy. Since reporting lines and stations with decimal accuracy was unnessary at the time, line and station numbers were rounded to whole numbers to save data column space. Computer cards had a limited number of character columns such as 128 columns in 1983 when the IEH ascii format was adopted. Data storage was also limited.

With the addition of 9 SCCOOS stations in 2004, it became necessary to report the Line & Sta numbers with .0 decimal accuracy to resolve stations. For example, to resolve sta 93.3 26.7 from SCCOOS sta 93.4 26.4, we have to report the decimal line.sta numbers in all the data. Since SCCOOS station data have been integrated into the CalCOFI time series, decimal line & station numbering was applied to the entire time series, even before 2004. Lines & stations of older data on ERDDAP or other biological datasets may not be reported to .0.