Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Belt transect surveys of corals at U.S. Pacific reefs from 2008-01-27 to 2008-04-27 (even size-class bins) (NCEI Accession 0189728)

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.