A long-term (1965–2015) ecological marine database from the LTER-Italy Northern Adriatic Sea site: plankton and oceanographic observations

In this paper we describe a 50-year (1965–2015) ecological database containing data collected in the northern Adriatic Sea (NAS) at one of the 25 research parent sites belonging to the Italian Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER-Italy, http://www.lteritalia.it, last access: February 2020). LTER-Italy is a formal member of the International (https://www.ilter.network, last access: February 2020) and European (http://www.lter-europe.net/, last access: February 2020) LTER networks. The NAS is undergoing a process, led by different research institutions and projects, of establishing a marine ecological observatory, building on the existing facilities, infrastructure, and long-term ecological data. During this process, the implementation of open-access and open-science principles has been started by creating an open-research life cycle that involves sharing ideas and results (scientific papers), data (raw and processed), metadata, methods, and software. The present data paper is framed within this wider context. The database is composed of observations on abiotic parameters and phytoplankton and zooplankton abundances, collected during 299 cruises in different sampling stations, in the Gulf of Venice in particular. Here we describe the sampling and analytical activities, the parameters, and the structure of the database. The database is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3516717 (Acri et al., 2019), and it was also uploaded in the DEIMS-SDR repository (Dynamic Ecological Information Management System – Site and Dataset Registry, https://deims.org/), which is the official site and data registry for the International LTER network.