Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt Transect Surveys for Demographics and Condition of Corals at U.S. Pacific Reefs from 2007 to 2012

The data described here result from benthic coral demographic surveys in the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas as part of NOAA's Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP). Permanent sites located in hard-bottom habitats in 0-30 m depths were surveyed using belt transects to collect adult coral colony metrics, including colony size, partial mortality in two categories - old dead and recent dead, and non-lesion forming condition, including bleaching and disease.

The data provided in this data set were collected during NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD; formerly the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division) led Pacific RAMP cruises across the Pacific Islands Region from 2008 to 2012.

Data collected as part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument funded research cruises in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012 are also included as these data were funded separately from but are complementary to the Pacific RAMP data collected by ESD. A two-stage stratified random sampling (StRS) design was employed during these monument-led missions in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The survey domain encompassed the majority of the mapped area of reef and hard bottom habitats in the 0-30 m depth range. The stratification scheme included island, reef zone, and depth. Sampling effort was allocated based on strata area and sites were randomly located within strata. The StRS design effectively reduces estimate variance through stratification using environmental covariates and by sampling more sites rather than sampling more transects at a site. Therefore, site-level estimates and site-to-site comparisons should be used with caution.

The Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP), established by the PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD)---formerly known as the Coral Reef Ecosystem Divisin (CRED)---and supported by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), is tasked with documenting and understanding the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems in the U.S. Pacific. Pacific RAMP involves interdisciplinary monitoring of oceanographic conditions and biological surveys of organisms associated with hard-bottom habitats in 0-30 m depths. Each Pacific Islands region—including the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas—was typically surveyed on a biennial cycle, with the goal to support integrated, consistent and comparable monitoring of coral reefs across all U.S.-affiliated regions.

The data described here was collected as part of the Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (RAMP), which pre-dates the establishment of the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) in 2013, which is a framework for conducting sustained observations of biological, climate, and socioeconomic indicators at 10 priority coral reefs across the U.S. and its territories. This integrated approach consolidates monitoring of coral reefs under a uniform method in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico. NCRMP is funded by the CRCP and supported by NOAA Fisheries, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), and many other partners. The PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division at NOAA Fisheries is leading biological monitoring of coral reefs in the U.S. Pacific Islands Region.

Data collected during monument-led cruises in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012 were added in 2019.

Raw survey data includes metadata for each survey (where, when, who, area); site characteristics (depth, reef type, habitat); individual adult coral observations identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible (usually species) including empirical size measurement and all other recorded colony attributes including partial mortality and condition. The raw data also include individual observations of crustose coralline algae diseases and Alcyonarian disease recorded disease type and lesion size.

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

Mariana Archipelago

American Samoa

Hawaiian Archipelago

Pacific Remote Island Areas

Not applicable

Not applicable

NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

CREP welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. CREP has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with CREP principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by CREP, proper acknowledgement of both CREP and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, CREP requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the CREP Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP). The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors.”

Data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

None

Please cite PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (for 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012 data only) when using the data.

Example:

Ecosystem Sciences Division; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2019). Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt Transect Surveys for Demographics and Condition of Corals at U.S. Pacific Reefs from 2007 to 2012. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/25260.

None

None

Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Oracle database view: V0_CORAL_OBS_C.

Observations were made by experienced benthic survey personnel who have been trained, undergone a series of calibration surveys and coral taxon identification testing, and have met a set of minimum standards for colony assessment and taxon identification in each region. The accuracy of species and genus level identification was high. The lowest taxonomic level was species in the Main Hawaiian Islands and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. For the remaining three Pacific regions, the lowest taxonomic level of coral identification was genus except for a select number of species that were consistently identified to species by all divers conducting the surveys. The number of species may change for each survey year depending on the experience and training of the benthic divers. In other words, the individual records within each region may include many more species than encompassed by the region lists, however, these were not consistently identified across all surveys so these records should be assessed at the genus level.

Handheld GPS units were used to locate random sites and mark site locations.

The taxon code AAAA is included where the segment was surveyed and no individual colonies were found. These are true zeros.

Only shallow water (0 to 30 meter depth range) hard-bottom habitats are surveyed. Survey sites were randomly selected using a systematic process based on available habitat and bathymetric data during monument-led missions to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands only (2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012). All other surveys were conducted at permanent sites. Although efforts are made to include broad spatial coverage of surveys at each island, weather conditions and other environmental constraints may have prevented the team from surveying exposed reef areas.

The value -9 has been used a placeholder or missing value for some fields.

The same methods of data collection are used at each surveyed site. Periodic examination of the data is conducted throughout each mission to check for diver bias or other discrepancies.

Quality control of the data occurred at a few stages from data entry to data ingestion into the Oracle database. Observations, including species identification, are periodically checked during expeditions for consistency between and among divers. Data entry is usually conducted on the same day as the surveys using a data entry interface with several data controls employed, and are quality controlled by individual divers checking entry errors at a separate time. Following a mission, the data is then run through rigorous quality control checks by the data management team before the data are migrated to the Oracle database. The data is quality controlled against the physical data sheets following data entry. There are also several queries in the MS Access / Oracle database to flag errors based on pre-defined criteria. Given the size of the data set, there remains some possibility of typographical or other errors.

The data is captured in several locations: physical data sheets, MS Access cruise database, and PIFSC Oracle database. The physical data sheets are housed at PIFSC. The MS Access cruise database is regularly backed up by the cruise data manager while at sea. The PIFSC Oracle database is regularly backed up by PIFSC ITS.

Belt transect surveys (version C) of coral demography and condition, employed by the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Ecosystem Sciences Division from 2008 to 2012 and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument from 2007 to 2012.