Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in the Gulf of Trieste - C1 station. Inventory of sampling and analytical methods and quality control of biogeochemical data

The time series station C1 (Latitude 45°42'2.99"N Longitude 13°42'36.00"E) in the Gulf of Trieste, in the northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea, is part of the Italian North Adriatic Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site (http://www.lteritalia.it/siti.htm). Station C1 is located at the outer border of the Natural Marine Reserve of Miramare (NMRM), a marine protected area managed by WWF – Italy, at 0.2 Km from the coast and with a bottom depth of 17 m. The Gulf of Trieste is a semi-enclosed basin, located in the northernmost and shallowest part of the Adriatic Sea, with a maximum depth of 26 m (Mozetic et al., 2002). The purposes of this report are (1) to make an inventory of analytical protocols and instruments used for biogeochemical analysis since the beginning of data acquisition, (2) to define a quality control protocol common for the whole biogeochemical dataset and (3) to provide a quality checked dataset, which is a pre-requisite for time series analysis.