Benthic Surveys in Faga'alu, American Samoa: comprehensive assessment of coral demography (adult and juvenile corals) from belt transect surveys in 2013, 2015, and 2020

The data described here result from benthic coral demographic surveys within belt transects of specified length and width for two life stages (juveniles and adults) in Faga’alu, American Samoa in 2013, 2015, and 2020. The data provide information on adult coral colony counts, morphology, size, partial mortality (old and recent dead), presence and causation of disease and other compromised health conditions, including bleaching. Juvenile colony surveys include morphology and size. Taxonomic identification of adult colonies is to the species level and genus level for juveniles.

In 2013 and 2015, the survey implemented a two-stage stratified random sampling (StRS) design to assess the Faga’alu coral reef community, and a one-stage StRS design in 2020. 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 cardinal position (i.e., north and south), reef zone (i.e., backreef and forereef) and depth (i.e., shallow: >0–6 m and mid-depth: >6–18 m). Sampling effort allocation was determined based on strata area and sites randomly located within strata. The StRS design effectively reduces estimate variance through stratification using environmental covariates and by sampling more sites rather than more transects per site. Therefore, site-to-site comparisons should proceed with caution.

These data are part of a NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) funded project aimed at establishing baseline, status, and trends data for coral demographics and benthic cover and composition via Rapid Ecological Assessment (REA) surveys conducted by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) at Faga'alu Bay, Tutuila, American Samoa between 2012 and 2020.

In August 2012 Faga’alu watershed in American Samoa was adopted by the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force Watershed Partnership Initiative as a priority site, with the objective to reduce inputs of land-based sources of pollution to nearby coastal areas and coral reefs within the watershed. The Samoa Maritime rock quarry was found to be a major contributor to the periodic flux of excessive sediments onto the adjacent reef in Faga‘alu. In September–December 2014, mitigation actions were implemented at the Samoa Maritime Quarry, including the installation of drainage systems, alternative ground cover, and retention ponds.

Data were collected to assess the effectiveness of management actions to reduce land-based sources of pollution impacts undertaken at the Samoa Maritime rock quarry. Pre-intervention baseline data were collected in 2013 and subsequent post-intervention monitoring in 2015 and 2020. Funding provided by the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) through two internal projects entitled. 1) Comprehensive Baseline Assessment and Pilot Test of Outcome Performance Measures in Faga’alu Bay, American Samoa, awarded to Suzie Holst. 2) Status and Trends Assessment for Land-based Sources of Pollution Impacts on Benthic Reef Communities in Faga’alu Bay and Vatia Bay, American Samoa, awarded to the NOAA Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD).

S. Holst Rice, A. Messina, T. Biggs, B. Vargas-Angel, and D. Whitall. 2016. Baseline Assessment of Faga'alu Watershed: A Ridge to Reef Assessment in Support of Sediment Reduction Activities and Future Evaluation of their Success. Silver Spring, MD: NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. NOAA Technical Memorandum CRCP 23. 44 pp. DOI: 10.7289/V5BK19C3

Vargas-Angel B, Schumacher BD. 2018. Baseline surveys for coral reef community structure and demographics in Vatia Bay and Faga'alu Bay, American Samoa. Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, PIFSC Special Publication, SP-18-002, 38 p. https://doi.org/10.7289/V5/SP-PIFSC-18-002.

and

Vargas-Ángel B, Huntington B. 2020. Status and trends assessments for land-based sources of pollution impacts on benthic reef communities in Faga‘alu Bay, American Samoa. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NOAA-TM-NMFS-PIFSC-109, 38 p. doi:10.25923/0gvj-zm69.

An Erosion and Sediment Control Plan was implemented at Samoa Maritime quarry to reduce excess sedimentation from quarry operations, and mitigation actions from the Plan took place in 2014 to install retention basins designed to stem the input of excess sediments into Faga’alu Stream below the quarry. REA surveys conducted by CREP in 2012 and 2013 serve as the pre-mitigation baseline, and surveys conducted in 2015 by CREP and later by the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources serve to document the downstream effects (e.g., changes to the coral community) in Faga’alu Bay from the mitigation efforts to reduce the sediment loads upstream.

Concurrent pre- and post-mitigation monitoring of turbidity and sediment load in Faga'alu is managed by San Diego State University via the CRCP-funded project titled, "Capacity Building for On-Island Impact Assessment of Sediment Load Reduction in Faga’alu Watershed, American Samoa". Long-term monitoring of the stream is transitioning to the American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency.

A report entitled "Baseline surveys for coral community structure and demographics in Vatia Bay and Faga'alu Bay, American Samoa" was prepared by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program for the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources.

Raw data include individual colony records with the corresponding physical data which reflect the description of the site.

An individual colony record for adult corals for 2015 includes colony species/genus identification, morphology, size information (cm), percent old dead, percent recent dead, cause of recent dead general category, cause of recent dead specific category, condition, extent and severity. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/51107

Juvenile coral colony records include colony species/genus identification, morphology, and size information (cm). https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/51108

The physical record for juvenile and adult corals includes the following: region, island, site, date (day, month, year), latitude (decimal degrees), longitude (decimal degrees), transect, segment, segment length, segment width, minimum depth (feet), and maximum depth.

An individual colony record for adult corals for 2013 includes colony species/genus identification, size information (cm), percent old dead, percent recent dead, condition, extent and severity. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/51109

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.

Faga'alu Bay, Tutuila, American Samoa

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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 Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), 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 NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) when using the data.

Example

Cite as: Vargas-Angel, Bernardo; Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2017). Benthic Surveys in Faga'alu, American Samoa: comprehensive assessment of coral demography (adult and juvenile corals) from belt transect surveys in 2013 and 2015. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/25369

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PIFSC Oracle database views: v0_coral_obs_c, v0_coral_obs_e and v0_coral_obs_f (date and location selection criteria required to subset the dataset)

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 of coral identification was genus except for a select number of species that were consistently identified to species by all divers conducting the surveys.

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

The taxon code AAAA is included where the segment was surveyed and no individual colonies were found in both the juvenile and adult colony records. These are true zeros. The value -9 is a placeholder or missing value for the fields: colony length, colony width (juveniles), extent, and severity. The value -1 is included where a coral colony is a fragment.

While colony lengths are derived from physical measurements, recent and old mortality are visual estimates; surveyors calibrate to reduce inter-observer bias

Survey transects were appropriately marked to allow direct, site-level temporal comparisons.

Complete. All planned demographic data were collected.

Only forereef, hard bottom habitats were surveyed.

Within each year, survey methods were consistent across all sites.

The quality control occurred at two major stages - 1) data entry and 2) data management. Data entry quality control included both review and manual error correction steps. Data management quality control included several standard error queries followed by correction prior to ingestion into Oracle database.

NOAA IRC and NOAA Fisheries ITS resources and assets.

The data described here were collected via belt transect surveys of coral demography (adult and juvenile corals) by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP):

2013: belt transect surveys of corals (version c) with individual colony counts.

2015-2020: belt transect surveys of adult corals (version e) with individual colony counts and health condition cause codes, and belt transect surveys of juvenile corals (version f) with individual colony counts