Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt Transect Surveys of Corals at U.S. Pacific Reefs in 2008 (even size-class bins)

The coral demographic data described here result from belt transect surveys conducted by the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD)---formerly the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division---from January 27 to April 27, 2008 at coral reef sites in American Samoa and the Pacific Remote Island Areas as part of NOAA's Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP), with funding from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP).

Surveys were conducted at fixed sites at depths ranging from 3-21 m. Sites were surveyed using belt transects to collect coral colony metrics. At each site, the surveyor listed and identified to the genus or species level, all coral colonies occurring within 0.5 sq. meters of each side of two, 25-m transect lines; and recorded the visually estimated size class to which the maximum diameter of each colony belonged (0-5 cm; 6-10 cm; 11-20 cm; 21-30 cm; etc. Size-class bins continue through 300 cm in 10-cm increments). These coral demographic data provide information on coral abundance (density, proportion occurrence, and total colony abundance), size distribution, and taxonomic richness.

Belt transect surveys of corals were conducted during Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP) cruises to support a long-term NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) for sustainable management and conservation of coral reef ecosystems.

Pacific RAMP, established by the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) and supported by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), was tasked with documenting and understanding the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems in the U.S. Pacific Islands Region. Pacific RAMP involved interdisciplinary monitoring of oceanographic conditions and biological surveys of organisms associated with hard-bottom habitats in the 0-30 m depth range and aimed to support integrated, consistent and comparable monitoring of coral reef systems. RAMP missions were conducted in each Pacific region, including the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas, on a biennial cycle.

Raw survey data includes field metadata for each survey (mission, region, island, site, LAT/LON, survey date); site characteristics (depth, reef type); survey transect characteristics (length and width); and individual coral observations identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible, including count and size-class bin.

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.

American Samoa

Pacific Remote Island Areas

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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.

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Please cite PIFSC Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD) when using the data.

Example:

Ecosystem Sciences Division, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, 2019: Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt Transect Surveys of Corals at U.S. Pacific Reefs in 2008 (even size-class bins), https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/25290.

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PIFSC Oracle Database View: V0_CORAL_OBS_B

Observations were made by experienced benthic survey personnel who were trained and tested to meet a set of minimum standards for colony assessment and taxon identification in each region. The expected taxonomic level of coral identification was genus; however a number of common and conspicuous species were identified to the species level. Taxonomic identities were verified against pictorial guides. The accuracy of coral taxa identification at the genus level is highly reliable; however, identification at the species level in field conditions is known to be challenging. Field identification of coral taxa at the species level improved with time, as surveyors gained a better knowledge of the morphological plasticity of individual coral species across the different study locations.

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

Only shallow water (0 to 30 meter depth range) hard-bottom habitats were surveyed. The survey sites were fixed and selected in consultation with local jurisdictional coral reef management practitioners, because of their ecological uniqueness, management needs (e.g., Marine Protected Areas), and to include a broad spatial coverage of surveys sites at each island/reef system. Weather conditions and other environmental constraints may have prevented the selection and/or execution of surveys in exposed and windward reef areas.

The same methods of data collection were used at each surveyed site. Periodic examination of the data is conducted throughout each mission to check for diver bias or other discrepancies. At Palmyra, site PAL-04, the protocol was amended to include all corals occurring within 1 sq. meter of each side of the transect lines.

Quality control of the data occurred at a few stages from data entry to data ingestion into the Oracle database. Observations, including species identification, were periodically checked during expeditions for consistency between and among divers, as well as verified against pictorial guides. Data entry was usually conducted on the same day as the surveys in an MS Access database. The data was quality controlled against the physical data sheets following data entry. Given the size of the data set, there remains some possibility of typographical or other errors.

Data was later migrated from the MS Access database to the PIFSC Oracle database.

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

Belt transect survey method for corals, version B: even size-class bins, employed by the Ecosystem Sciences Division in 2008.