Field name modifiers and suffixes

Modifiers

The table below lists acceptable modifiers to modify field names. They must be appended after the base name (and wavelength, if any) but before any suffix.

Field modifiers

Field_modifier	Units	Description
_###ang	does not change base field’s units	Collection angle. Append ‘_###ang’ to the end of a field name to indicate the collection angle a measurment (such as VSF) was taken at, where ‘###’ is replaced by the float or integer representation of an angle in degrees
_##cilo	does not change base field’s units	Lower confidence interval, where ## is to be replaced with the percent the confidence interval was computed for
_##ciup	does not change base field’s units	Upper confidence interval, where ## is to be replaced with the percent the confidence interval was computed for
_ex###	does not change base field’s units	Excitation wavelength. Append ‘_ex###’ to the end of a field name to indicate the wavelength of excitation the measurement was taken at, where ‘###’ is replaced by the float or integer represenation of wavelength in nm. May be used in combination with ‘_em###’, as such: ‘<field>_ex###_em###’, where ‘_ex###’ preceeds ‘_em###’
_em###	does not change base field’s units	Emission wavelength. Append ‘_em###’ to the end of a field name to indicate the wavelength of emission the measurement was taken at, where ‘###’ is replaced by the float or integer represenation of wavelength in nm. May be used in combination with ‘_ex###’, as such: ‘<field>_ex###_em###’, where ‘_ex###’ preceeds ‘_em###’
_###filt	does not change base field’s units	Filter size current observed measurements are larger than, where ### is the number of micrometers of the filter size Unless this suffix is used, it is assumed the methodology used a standard filter size. May be used in combination with ‘###prefilt’, as such: ‘<field>_###filt_###prefilt)’
_###prefilt	does not change base field’s units	Filter size current observed measurements are smaller than, where ### is the number of micrometers of the filter size. Unless this suffix is used, measurements are assumed to be from unfiltered or whole water. May be used in combination with ‘###prefilt’, as such: ‘<field>_###filt_###prefilt)’
_###ppt	does not change base field’s units	Parts per thousand, where ### indicates the solution’s concentration that a measurement was taken in, as a floating point number or integer
_###size	does not change base field’s units	Median bin diameter in microns. Used as a suffix for the field ‘PSD’
_stokes1	does not change base field’s units	First Stokes parameter for characterizing polarization
_stokes2	does not change base field’s units	Second Stokes parameter for characterizing polarization
_stokes3	does not change base field’s units	Third Stokes parameter for characterizing polarization
_stokes4	does not change base field’s units	Fourth Stokes parameter for characterizing polarization

Suffixes

The table below lists acceptable suffixes to modify field names. They must be appended at the end of field name, after any modifiers or wavelength. For any field including a suffix, a corresponding field (without suffix) must exist (e.g. if Rrs442.5_sd is provided, Rrs442.5 must exist).

Field suffixes

Field_suffix	Units	Description
_abun	cell/L	Cell abundance for a particular (phytoplankton) taxonomic type
_biovol	m^3/L	Bio-volume for a particular (phytoplankton) taxonomic type
_carbon	ug/L	Carbon concentration for a particular (phytoplankton) taxonomic type
_bincount	none	Number of records averaged into a bin or reported measurement specific to the prefix that _bincount is attached to. The field bincount can simply be used if the bincount applies to all forms of data in the file but this field suffix (i.e. ‘<field>_bincount’) can be used multiple times in the same file for field-specific numbers
_quality	none	An analyst-defined quality flag that is relevant to the base field name. A definition of the quality flags should be provided as metadata header comments and within accompanying documentation files.
_cv	unitless	Coefficient of Variation
_sd	same as base field’s units	Standard Deviation
_se	same as base field’s units	Standard Error
_qa	none	added by OCDB staff, it is set to True when measurement pass internal quality checked and will be considered for matchups