In accordance with SO #3423 - The Gulf of America and SO #3424 - Mount McKinley and Landmarks Honoring the Alaskan People, new USGS data releases specific to those named places will utilize the new name Gulf of America and the restored name Mount McKinley. Per USGS practice, historical data will retain the name of the geographic features as they were known at the time the data were originally released.
Data Release
Experimental Data on Construction and Erosion of Orbicella Coral Reefs in the Florida Keys, U.S.A.
By Ilsa B. Kuffner,1 Lauren T. Toth,1 J. Harold Hudson,2 William B. Goodwin,3 Anastasios Stathakopoulos,1 Lucy A. Bartlett,4 and Elizabeth M. Whitcher5
1U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, U.S.A.
2Reef Tech, Inc., 8325 SW 68 Street, Miami, FL 33143, U.S.A.
3NOAA Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 95230 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, FL 33037, U.S.A.
4Contracted to U.S. Geological Survey by Cherokee Nation Technologies, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, 600 4th Street, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, U.S.A.
5Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901, U.S.A.
Summary
The USGS Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project provides science that helps resource managers tasked with the stewardship of coral reef resources. This data release contains data on coral-growth rates for Orbicella sp. coral colonies grown at five sites on the Florida Keys reef tract from 2013 to 2015, survey data for census-based carbonate budgeting at Hen and Chickens Reef (Islamorada, Florida), and time-series photographs taken of permanent markers used to measure reef erosion at Hen and Chickens Reef in 1998 and 2015. The time-series photographs document a loss in coral-reef elevation over 17 years at this site. The data will be used to inform resource managers of the capacity for future growth (or loss) of reefs dominated by genus Orbicella in the Florida Keys so that the reef ecosystem might be better understood and managed. The datasets included here were interpreted in Kuffner and others (2019).
Kuffner, I.B., Toth, L.T., Hudson, J.H., Goodwin, W.B., Stathakopoulos, A., Bartlett, L.A., and Whitcher, E.M., 2019, Improving estimates of coral reef construction and erosion with in situ measurements: Limnology and Oceanography, https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11184.
Data
*Note: To view the tabulated portions of this dataset in tab-delimited format, arranged by column, please use the Excel spreadsheet included in the download file.
| File Name and Description | Metadata (XML format) | Metadata (text format) | Download File |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbicella_growth_FL_USA.zip Data describing the growth of corals in the Orbicella annularis species complex from 2013 to 2015 at five off-shore coral reefs in the Florida Keys (.csv) |
Orbicella_growth_FL_USA.xml | Orbicella_growth_FL_USA.txt | Orbicella_growth_FL_USA.zip (43 KB) |
| Benthic_cover_HCreef.zip Data describing the biotic and abiotic entities covering the seafloor at Hen and Chickens Reef Sanctuary Preservation Area (.csv) |
Same as above | Same as above | Benthic_cover_HCreef.zip (51 KB) |
| Parrotfish_HCreef.zip Data describing the species, life phase, size class, and abundance of parrotfish found at Hen and Chickens Reef Sanctuary Preservation Area (.csv) |
Same as above | Same as above | Parrotfish_HCreef.zip (80 KB) |
| Eroding_Sponges_HCreef.zip Data describing the eroding-sponge species, area of reef covered, and percentage covered by the species found at Hen and Chickens Reef Sanctuary Preservation Area (.csv) |
Same as above | Same as above | Eroding_Sponges_HCreef.zip (38 KB) |
| FL_erosion-photo-record.zip Photographic images (JPEG) of the seafloor collected with underwater cameras at twenty-eight reef-erosion markers located at Hen and Chickens Reef Sanctuary Preservation Area (.jpg) |
Same as above | Same as above | FL_erosion-photo-record.zip (560.7 MB) |
Figure 1. Location map showing sites where datasets included in this data release were collected. Sites are Pulaski Shoal (24.69355°N 82.77280°W), Looe Key Nursery (24.56275°N 81.40013°W), Sombrero Reef (24.62687°N 81.10893°W), Hen and Chickens Reef (24.93424°N, 80.54950°W), Crocker Reef (24.90908°N 80.52665°W), and Fowey Rocks (25.59047°N 80.09560°W).
Suggested Citation
Kuffner, I.B., Toth, L.T., Hudson, J.H., Goodwin, W.B., Stathakopoulos, A., Bartlett, L.A., and Whitcher, E.M., 2019, Experimental data on construction and erosion of Orbicella coral reefs in the Florida Keys, U.S.A.: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P92NVINW.