Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program (AZMP)

Data and products

• Hydrographic data (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, fluorescence, chlorophyll a and nutrients)
• Climate Indices (oceanography, freshwater, ice and atmosphere)
• Plankton
  • Net collected
  • CPR collected
• Sea Levels
• Remote Sensing
• Meteorological Data

What's New

The 2009 AZMP Bulletin (no.8) is now available in the Documents section.

Please visit the What's New section to learn of the latest updates.

Resources

• Publications (founding documents, primary publications, research documents, status reports, studies)
• Documents (AZMP Bulletin, technical and administrative documents, data management documents)
• Links

Mission

The AZMP was implemented in 1998 with the aim of collecting and analyzing the biological, chemical, and physical field data that are necessary to (1) characterize and understand the causes of oceanic variability at the seasonal, inter-annual, and decadal scales, (2) provide multidisciplinary data sets that can be used to establish relationships among the biological, chemical, and physical variables, and (3) provide adequate data to support the sound development of ocean activities. AZMP involves the Gulf, Québec, Maritimes, and Newfoundland regions of DFO. Its sampling strategy is based on (1) seasonal and opportunistic sampling along “sections” to quantify the oceanographic variability in the Canadian NW Atlantic shelf region, (2) higher-frequency temporal sampling at more accessible “fixed sites” to monitor the shorter time scale dynamics in representative areas, (3) fish survey and remote sensing data to provide broader spatial coverage and a context to interpret other data, and (4) data from other existing monitoring programs such as CPR (Continuous Plankton Recorder) lines, Sea Level Network, nearshore Long-Term Temperature Monitoring, Toxic Algae monitoring, etc., or from other external organizations (e.g., winds and air temperatures from Environment Canada) to complement AZMP data.