The Lake Sunapee Protective Association (Sunapee, New Hampshire, USA)
has been operating an instrumented buoy on Lake Sunapee (maximum depth
33.7 meters) beginning on 27 August 2007. The environmental sensors on
the buoy from 2007 - 2013 provided information on weather conditions,
lake thermal structure, and oxygen dynamics, and their data can be
used to calculate physical and biological variables such as buoyancy
frequency, thermocline depth, thermal stability, and lake metabolism.
The sensors were programmed to collect environmental data every 10
minutes. The buoy collected meteorological data 1.7 meters above the
lake surface, including wind speed and direction (Vaisala WXT52
anemometer), air temperature and humidity (Vaisala HMP50), and
photosynthetically active radiation (PAR Li-Cor). The water
temperature sensors (TempLine thermistors from Apprise Technology in
2007-2010; NexSens T-node sensors 2010-2013) were situated at 0.5-2
meter intervals from 0-14 meters deep with the bottom sensor
approximately 1 meter from the sediments. The dissolved oxygen
(Zebra-Tech d-opto) sensor was deployed at approximately 1 meter below
the surface and recorded oxygen concentration (mg/L), oxygen
saturation (%), and temperature at the sensor (oxygen saturation is
not included in this dataset). The buoy was anchored at approximately
15 meter deep water near the Loon Island lighthouse in the northern
half of the lake, near the deepest part of the lake (43.390 N, -72.057
W). During the winter of 2007 - 2008, the buoy froze into the ice and
continually recorded data with the uppermost thermistor below the
bottom of the ice. In winter of 2008 - 2009, the buoy was damaged by
ice and data were not collected until re-deployment on 29 July 2009.
In subsequent years, the buoy was deployed from April or May to
October or November at the Loon Island location and limited data were
obtained during the winter months at the Sunapee Harbor (43.386 N,
-72.081 W). In 2013, the buoy was taken offline for a 15-day period
(27 August – 10 September 2013) to add additional sensors. This
dataset has been modified (removing obviously errant readings and
drift-correcting dissolved oxygen) from the raw data for the purposes
of the associated manuscript, Richardson et al. (2016). Though only
partial data was referenced in that publication, the entire available
record for the 2007-2013 time period is included in this dataset.