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Introduction
 Dear colleagues,
Although the tropical and subtropical Atlantic is poorly represented in
biological data sets readily available to the scientists (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/indprod.html),
many of you are aware of extremely detailed biological surveys in the
region by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, from 1960 to 1990 (Greze 1984; Piontkovski and
Landry, 2003; Zuyev et al., 1990).
A minor part of this data, mostly hydrographic information, was released in
1992-1994 in the framework of the GODAR project.
Select aspects of the ecological results have also found their way into the
open literature by Western European and US scientists, some of whom were
cruise participants. However, the vast majority of the data remained in
archives.
By the given CD, the Oceanological Center of the
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine presents an extensive data set
which bridges the critical gap in the World Ocean Database (WOD 2001, http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/) for the
tropical and subtropical Atlantic. As well, the CD incorporated research
articles and full list of Russian references associated with the above
data.
One notable aspect of the data is the relative constancy of sampling
methods throughout the surveys. In addition, most of the taxonomic analyses
of phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish species were conducted under the
auspices of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas specialists in
the taxonomy of the various groups.
The database and research focus on a portion of the Atlantic Ocean that
includes all or parts of three biogeochemical provinces defined by A. Longhurst (1998) - the Eastern Tropical Atlantic
(ETRA), the Western Tropical Atlantic (WTRA) and the South Atlantic Gyre
(SATL).
Hopefully, this product will contribute important new insights to our
understanding of spatial patterns of species diversity and species-climate
linkages. We expect that the species inventory, linked to the species
database, CTD casts and nutrients would enable its users to engage a
developed CD in inter-disciplinary comprehensive analyses of tropical and
subtropical ecosystems of the Atlantic Ocean.
We are grateful to many colleagues from the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Marine Hydrophysical Institute, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Stony Brook University and the National Science Foundation
(grant # DEB-0203622) for support and cooperation.
Sergey
Piontkovski
Principal Investigator to the project
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