Spatio-temporal representativeness of euphotic depth in situ sampling in transitional coastal waters

• Representativeness of in situ spot sampling was assessed in dynamic coastal waters.
• Euphotic depths undergo high spatio-temporal variability in SW-Finnish archipelago.
• Spot samples sometimes fail to represent their surroundings even on a local scale.
• A procedure to detect spatio-temporal anomalies is presented for spot sample data.
• Sampling frequency needs to be adapted to the overall local variability.

In dynamic coastal waters, the representativeness of spot sampling is limited to the measurement time and place due to local heterogeneity and irregular water property fluctuations. We assessed the representativeness of in situ sampling by analysing spot-sampled depth profiles of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) in dynamic coastal archipelago waters in the south-western Finnish coast of the Baltic Sea. First, we assessed the role of spatio-temporality within the underwater light dynamics. As a part of this approach, an anomaly detection procedure was tested on a dataset including a large archipelago area and extensive temporal coverage throughout the ice-free season. The results suggest that euphotic depth variability should be treated as a spatio-temporal process rather than considering spatial and temporal dimensions separately. Second, we assessed the representativeness of spot sampling through statistical analysis of comparative data from spatially denser sampling on three test sites on two optically different occasions. The datasets revealed variability in different dimensions and scales. The suitability of a dataset to reveal wanted phenomena can usually be improved by careful planning and by clearly defining the data sampling objectives beforehand. Nonetheless, conducting a sufficient in situ sampling in dynamic coastal area is still challenging: detecting the general patterns at all the relevant dimensions is complicated by the randomness effect, which reduces the reliability of spot samples on a more detailed scale. Our results indicate that good representativeness of a euphotic depth sampling location is not a stable feature in a highly dynamic environment.