The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) includes sensors that measure key biogeochemical properties (pH, pCO₂, bio-optics, nitrate, dissolved oxygen) on both moored and mobile autonomous platforms across arrays in the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans. These sensors provide enormous potential to support the oceanographic community in studying a wide range of important interdisciplinary questions.

However, OOI biogeochemical sensor data have thus far been underutilized by the oceanographic community, as the application of these rich data streams to quantify biogeochemical fluxes and answer many questions of scientific interest (e.g., rates of air-sea CO₂ flux, productivity, and export; comparison across sites; monitoring of long-term changes) require effective calibration and validation, including post-deployment human-in-the-loop processing.

To broaden the use of OOI biogeochemical sensor data and increase community capacity to produce analysis-ready data products, we acquired NSF support to bring together scientists with expertise in biogeochemical sensor calibration and analysis from both within and beyond the current OOI user community to develop guidelines and best practices for using OOI biogeochemical sensor data. These recommendations will be collated in a published white paper that will be shared with the broader oceanographic community to build data user capacity and enable new scientific applications of OOI biogeochemical sensor data.