Collaborative sampling trial in the context of quality assurance in the German marine monitoring programme for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea

This paper presents the assessment of a collaborative trial in sampling in the Baltic Sea in the framework of quality assurance in the German marine monitoring programme for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The objective of investigations was to determine the influence of sampling on analytical results for selected monitoring parameters and to harmonize the procedure for sampling of sea water to a large extent. In these studies the staff of three vessels took replicate sea water samples, 1 m below the surface and below the halocline, at two monitoring stations. Mass concentration mean values for different nutrient parameters were obtained from each sample, all in one laboratory. Data produced from the hierarchical design were treated with robust analysis of variance (ANOVA) to generate uncertainty estimates, as standard uncertainties (“u” expressed as standard deviation), for geochemical variation (sgeochem), primary sampling (ssampling), and chemical analysis (sanalysis). Geochemical variation dominated the total variance in all cases. Sampling and analytical uncertainties contributed together up to 15% of the total variance and had a relative measurement uncertainty (u%) of less than 2% for all the parameters investigated. Thus for this study the sampling protocol and the analytical method could be regarded as fit-for-purpose.