SCAR Persistent Organic Pollutants Database

A compilation of persistent organic pollutant data from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, entered from journal and other publications. This database is accompanied by an interactive data exploration app at https://pops.apps.aq/

Data table schemas

Sources data table

- source_id: The unique identifier of this source

- source_details: The bibliographic details for this source

- source_notes: Relevant notes about this source – if it’s a published paper, this is probably the abstract

- source_doi: The DOI of the source (paper or dataset), in the form "10.xxxx/yyyy"

Main data table

- source_id: The identifier of the source study from which this record was obtained (see corresponding entry in the sources data table)

- original_record_id: The identifier of this data record in its original source, if it had one

- location: The name of the location at which the data was collected

- west: The westernmost longitude of the sampling region, in decimal degrees (negative values for western hemisphere longitudes)

- east: The easternmost longitude of the sampling region, in decimal degrees (negative values for western hemisphere longitudes)

- south: The southernmost latitude of the sampling region, in decimal degrees (negative values for southern hemisphere latitudes)

- north: The northernmost latitude of the sampling region, in decimal degrees (negative values for southern hemisphere latitudes)

- altitude_min: The minimum altitude of the sampling region, in metres

- altitude_max: The maximum altitude of the sampling region, in metres

- depth_min: The shallowest depth of the sampling, in metres

- depth_max: The deepest depth of the sampling, in metres

- observation_date_start: The start of the sampling period

- observation_date_end: The end of the sampling period. If sampling was carried out over multiple seasons (e.g. during January of 2002 and January of 2003), this will be the first and last dates (in this example, from 1-Jan-2002 to 31-Jan-2003)

- observervation_date_notes: Free-text field containing any notes about the sampling dates

- event_id: A unique identifier for the measurement event. All measurements associated with a given event have the same event_id. For example, if a single sample was analyzed for multiple compounds, then each of those compound measurements will have the same event_id, as will any measurements of properties such as air temperature, volume sampled, etc. Rows with the same event_id and measurement_name are essentially the same thing measured during the same event, but may represent different processing methods, different physical samples (see physical_sample_id) or different analytical replicates (see analytical_replicate_id).

- physical_sample_id: Where multiple samples were taken from a larger bulk sample, this column identifies the samples

- analytical_replicate_id: Where the lab analysis was replicated on each physical sample (i.e. multiple sub-samples of each sample were run through the machine), this column identifies the replicates

- analytical_replicate_count: If lab analyses were replicated but the data entered here represent the aggregated results over the replicates, this column holds the number of replicates (analytical_replicate_id column in this case will be blank, because the data being entered pertain to multiple replicates)

- sample_notes: free text notes on the sample

- taxon_name: The name of the taxon, if applicable. This may differ from taxon_name_original if, for example, taxonomy has changed since the original publication, if the original publication had spelling errors or used common (not scientific) names

- taxon_name_original: The name of the taxon, as it appeared in the original source

- aphia_id: The numeric identifier of the taxon in the World Register of Marine Species. Likely to be missing for terrestrial taxa

- gbif_usage_key: The identifier of the taxon in the GBIF taxonomic backbone

- tax_rank, tax_kingdom, tax_phylum, tax_class, tax_order, tax_family, tax_genus: The taxonomic details of the taxon

- measurement_substrate: The basis of the measurement (e.g. "gas phase air", or "soil"). Variations in terminology across original publications have been consolidated, to give a more consistent set of terms in this column

- measurement_substrate_original: The original measurement substrate term

- measurement_substrate_group: measurement_substrate values have been grouped into "Air", "Faeces", "Fat", "Non-Fat Tissue", "Primary Producer", "Snow, Ice Or Water", "Soil Or Sediment", or "Whole Organism"

- measurement_name: The name of the compound or quantity that was measured, e.g. "HCB" or "air temperature". Variations in terminology across original publications have been consolidated, to give a more consistent set of terms in this column

- measurement_name_original: The original measurement name term

- measurement_name_group: measurement_name values have been grouped into "Dioxins and Furans", "Natural organobromine", "OCPs", "Other BFRs", "PBDEs", "PCBs", "PCNs", "PFAS", "Short Chain Chlorinated Paraffins", and "Unclassified"

- measurement_min_value, measurement_max_value, measurement_mean_value: The minimum, maximum, and mean values of the measurements made on this sample

- measurement_variability_value: The variability of the measurements made on this sample

- measurement_variability_type: The type of variability being reported ("SD", "SE")

- measurement_units: The units of measurement

- measurement_method: Free-text description of the measurement method

- quality_flag: An indicator of the quality of this record. "Q" indicates that the data are known to be questionable for some reason. The reason should be in the notes column. "G" indicates good data

- is_secondary_data: An indicator of whether this record was entered from its primary source, or from a secondary citation. "Y" here indicates that the data came from another paper and were being reported in this paper as secondary data. Secondary data records might be removed at a later date and replaced with information from the original source

- notes: Any other notes