====== How to select river stations for the ECOOP River Station Lists ======

DRAFT 3 Jan 2008

The ECOOP River Station Catalogue is an overview over //all// the river discharge stations that are relevant to coastal and shelf seas oceanography in a ROOS region. The **ECOOP River Station List** contains a subset of the listings in the Catalogue. The selected subset contains the stations that are most important (in some sense) for operational oceanography, i.e., //the ones to be pursued first for data access//. It is a short-list that, if attained, would cover the basic needs of operational modeling and monitoring; adding other stations would only give marginal benefit.

=== What are the criteria for selecting the stations? ===
 

They may vary by region, but here are some candidates:

  - All the largest rivers emptying into the ROOS region should be included.
  - The stations included should cover at least 80% of the total freshwater discharge to the ROOS region.
  - The stations included represent the discharge to the sea for the river, or the discharge can be parameterized on their data.
  - NRT data access is currently available or reasonably feasible.
  - Useful sets of archived data are available.
  - Other considerations, for example:
    * Rivers that are especially important sources of nutrients, pollutants, etc.
    * Station where there exist formulae for parameterizing other river discharges, total run-off for an area, etc.
    * Rivers that affect particularly sensitive coastal systems / habitats.

=== What to do? ===

  * Create a separate xls file for the ECOOP River Station List for each ROOS region. Simply remove all the non-included stations from the ECOOP River Station Catalogue.
  * Name the file similar to BOOS_river_list.xls
  * Do not change the column structure from the V0 River Station Catalogue xls file.