Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt transect surveys of corals at U.S. Pacific reefs from 2002-02-09 to 2007-05-22 (uneven size-class bins) (NCEI Accession 0189729)

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 2002 to 2007 at coral reef sites 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) with funding from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP).

Surveys were conducted at fixed sites at depths ranging between 10 m and 15 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; >5-10 cm; >10-20 cm; >20-40 cm; >40-80 cm; >80-160 cm; or >160 cm). In geographic regions such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands where coral richness and abundance are reduced relative to lower latitude regions with higher species richness, the protocol was amended to include all corals occurring within 1 m of each side of the transect lines.

These coral demographic data provide information on coral abundance (density, proportion occurrence, and total colony abundance), size distribution, and taxonomic richness.