Coral reef ecosystem marine protected area monitoring in Fagamalo, American Samoa: comprehensive assessment of coral demography (adult and juvenile corals) from belt transect surveys in 2015

In 2010 the village of Fagamalo, Tutuila, American Samoa, designated a no-take Marine Protected Area that sees the protection of 2.25 square kilometers of ocean. Because little is known regarding the status of living marine communities in the area, and at the request of the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, NOAA scientists conducted surveys to assess the status of the benthic communities and establish a baseline against which to compare temporal change.

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) according to protocols established by the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). In 2015 data were collected at 18 stratified randomly selected sites. These data include:

1) an assessment of coral colony density and size-class distribution for the selected monitoring sites;

2) an assessment of coral recruitment at the monitoring sites; and

3) an evaluation of coral colony condition, including mortality, disease, and bleaching.

These data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive. Additionally, photoquadrat benthic images were also collected (documented and archived separately).

These data were generated from benthic surveys to establish a comprehensive baseline for benthic composition and coral demographics, and are part of a NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) funded project, entitled: "Coral reef ecosystem monitoring training and capacity building to support improved resource management in American Samoa."

An informal report was prepared by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) and submitted to the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR) in 2017. The report includes the data for Fagamalo described here, as well as data collected in April 2016 by the NOAA CREP fish team.

"Summary Report of Baseline Surveys for Benthic and Fish Communities in the Fagamalo No-Take Marine Protected Area, American Samoa"

https://data.nodc.noaa.gov/coris/library/NOAA/CRCP/NMFS/PIFSC/Projects/1083/Fagamalo_summary_CREP.pdf

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 includes colony species/genus identification, morphology, maximum diameter (centimeter), 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/46826

Juvenile coral colony records include colony species/genus identification, morphology, maximum diameter (centimeter) and perpendicular diameter (centimeter). https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/30777

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.

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.

Fagamalo, 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). Coral reef ecosystem marine protected area monitoring in Fagamalo, American Samoa: comprehensive assessment of coral demographics from belt transect surveys in 2015. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/30775

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PIFSC Oracle database views: 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.

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.

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) following the same protocol to that established by the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP).