Northern Caspian survey off the Ural delta, 2016

A four-day April 2016 LIF lidar survey of the shallow northern Caspian off the Ural River delta, with median suspended matter near 55 mg/L and chlorophyll-a near 8.5 µg/L

Published figures

Interpolated campaign fields, reproduced in their original published form.

Interpolated chlorophyll a field mapped along the lidar track, Northern Caspian off the Ural delta, 2016 — Fig. 1Chlorophyll a

Interpolated total organic carbon field mapped along the lidar track, Northern Caspian off the Ural delta, 2016 — Fig. 2Total organic carbon

Interpolated total suspended matter field mapped along the lidar track, Northern Caspian off the Ural delta, 2016 — Fig. 3Total suspended matter

Northern Caspian, Ural deltaCaspian Sea

● Caspian Sea 2016, Ural delta, 2016-04-09 – 2016-04-12161,275 measurements IDW interpolation, 600 samples

Chl-a3.5425.0µg/L

CDOM2.083.35a.u.

TSM27.9130mg/L

Fig. 4 Campaign measurement record. 161,275 lidar returns are plotted along the vessel track for Chl-a, CDOM, TSM. The field view applies inverse-distance weighting to the same observations; the shoreline is from OpenStreetMap.

From 9 to 12 April 2016, a LIF lidar surveyed the shallow northern Caspian off the Ural River delta, south of Atyrau, recording chlorophyll-a, CDOM, and total suspended matter through river-influenced water.

Suspended matter had a median of 55 mg/L, and the highest 5% of readings exceeded 98 mg/L. Chlorophyll-a had a median of 8.5 µg/L and reached 21 µg/L at the same percentile.