Characteristics of amino acids in the surface sediments of the Changjiang Estuary, China

Amino acids (AAs) constitute the largest reservoir of organic nitrogen in most marine organisms and are a major fraction of characterized carbon in marine particulate matter. AAs are also useful indicators of degradation in the marine environment. This article reports original content data of 17 individual amino acids on 47 surface sediment samples and 18 suspended particulate samples in the water column in Changjiang Estuary. Contents of amino acids in suspended particulates were much higher than that in the surface sediments. The data are supplemental to our research paper, entitled “Organic matter degradation in surface sediments of the Changjiang Estuary: Evidence from amino acids” (Wang et al., 2018) [1]. The data are very useful to researchers and policy makers on estuarine benthic environment and ecology.