Description
Kelps are critical habitat structuring organisms forming dense underwater forests in nearshore rocky reefs of northern California. Kelp forests support a range of species such as red abalone and red sea urchins which form the basis for important invertebrate fisheries in the region. Along with fisheries, kelp forests provide a suite of other ecosystem services including supporting biodiversity and carbon sequestration, making them critical habitats to monitor. Monitoring of kelps and kelp obligate species is now more important than ever with the intensification of ocean changes such as marine heatwaves, low oxygen events and ocean acidification. Changes in kelp forest ecosystems associated with fishing can be observed inside fished sites whereas changes in protected sites suggests region wide stressors. In this long-term, bull kelp forest monitoring program, divers quantify key marine invertebrates, algal cover and substrate types along transects inside and outside fished sites centered in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, in northern California. As nearshore kelp forest ecosystems face increasing stressors, long term monitoring programs will be critical for informing fishery management, restoration strategies and marine spatial planning.
Data Records
The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 4,097 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Laura Rogers-Bennett, & Robert Klamt. (2024). Bull Kelp Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Database, Northern California, 1971-2023 (ongoing). California Ocean Protection Council Data Repository. doi:10.25494/P66W3J.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Geological Survey. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 0a9abcfb-2ac6-44b3-b241-ca66eff99b76. United States Geological Survey publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
kelp; abalone; sea urchin; sea star; sunflower star; substrate; Northern California; Algae; Marine protected area (MPA); Kelp forest/shallow; subtidal; Long-term MPA monitoring; North Coast; Invertebrates; Samplingevent
Contacts
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Principal Investigator
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3309-5352
- Metadata Provider ●
- Point Of Contact
- Data Manager
Geographic Coverage
Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, in northern California, USA
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [38.315, -123.829], North East [39.429, -123.072] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
No Description available
| Kingdom | Chromista, Plantae, Animalia |
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| Phylum | Mollusca, Arthropoda, Porifera, Chordata, Rhodophyta, Ochrophyta, Cnidaria, Echinodermata |
| Class | Holothuroidea, Demospongiae, Florideophyceae, Phaeophyceae, Bivalvia, Ascidiacea, Echinoidea, Polyplacophora, Anthozoa, Cephalopoda, Malacostraca, Gastropoda, Asteroidea, Teleostei |
| Order | Nudibranchia, Clionaida, Pectinida, Trochida, Decapoda, Neogastropoda, Perciformes, Dendrochirotida, Chitonida, Forcipulatida, Laminariales, Tetractinellida, Valvatida, Actiniaria, Rhodymeniales, Spinulosida, Lepetellida, Synallactida, Ovalentaria incertae sedis, Tethyida, Stolidobranchia, Spirularia, Camarodonta, Octopoda |
| Family | Asteropseidae, Clionaidae, Actiniidae, Echinasteridae, Asterinidae, Cucumariidae, Cerianthidae, Dorididae, Cancridae, Paguridae, Lottiidae, Sebastidae, Tethyidae, Champiaceae, Styelidae, Goniodorididae, Laminariaceae, Pholidae, Tonicellidae, Jordaniidae, Solasteridae, Cottidae, Tetillidae, Mopaliidae, Asteriidae, Acmaeidae, Haliotidae, Pectinidae, Varunidae, Sclerodactylidae, Lithodidae, Tegulidae, Hexagrammidae, Buccinidae, Embiotocidae, Fissurellidae, Strongylocentrotidae, Stichopodidae, Muricidae, Epialtidae, Acanthochitonidae, Grapsidae |
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1971-09-01 / 2023-09-18 |
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Project Data
The Marine Invertebrate Survey and Assessment Project focuses on addressing processes that impact marine populations and communities, and then applies these findings to fishery management and marine conservation issues. Staff work primarily with benthic (sea floor) marine invertebrates inhabiting nearshore rocky reef ecosystems, or sand, mud, or soft sediment environments. Staff use field, experimental and modeling approaches to understand population and community-level dynamics.
| Title | Marine Invertebrate Survey and Assessment Project |
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| Study Area Description | Survey sites are located on rocky reef kelp forest habitat. Surveys take place in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties in northern California which is home to 90% of the bull kelp forest habitat in northern California. |
| Design Description | The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Invertebrate Management Project conducts annual kelp forest surveys in northern California. Surveys are conducted to monitor the health of the kelp forest community focusing on important foundation species such as bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, ecosystem engineers including purple sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, and fished species such as red abalone, Haliotis rufescens and red sea urchins, Mesocentrotus franciscanus. CDFW enforcement staff play a vital role in these survey efforts providing patrol boats as work platforms and experienced crew to captain small vessels and support divers. Scuba divers deploy from small boats including rigid hull inflatable, whaler and zodiacs. The small boats use the larger patrol boats as a base of operations for equipment such as dive compressor as well as survey and dive equipment. |
Sampling Methods
Scuba divers that are certified by the CDFW and/or the American Academy of Underwater Sciences trained are used to conduct the surveys. Divers must be trained in underwater survey techniques and be able to locate and identify cryptic species including two species of sea urchins and three species of abalone. Diver safety takes precedence over data collection. Once trained, divers are assigned to randomly-selected GPS way points within designated depth strata: A: 0-15ft, B:16-30ft, C:31-45ft, and D:46-60ft. Divers typically complete 8-9 transects within each of the four depth strata ranging from 0-60 feet at each site. Divers swim along transect areas measuring 30 x 2m in area across the rocky reef. All transects are in habitat which is dominated (>70% rock) by rocky reef. Two divers (a dive team) work together to count and measure organisms along the transect with each diver sampling a 1-meter swath on either side of the 30 m tape for a total survey area of 60 m2. On average 30% of the divers working with CDFW divers are volunteer citizen science divers or scientific divers belonging to other California science dive programs such as the University of California, California State University system or NOAA divers. Data collected on the transects include depth of transect, number, size and species of abalone and urchins, number of associated species and predators, substrate, algal type percent cover. Emergent sampling focuses on emergent, exposed, or slightly cryptic animals but visible without turning rocks or the use of a flash light. Where needed divers mark abalone shells with yellow forestry crayons to avoid duplicate counts and measures. Data that is needed from each dive is specified on waterproof datasheets which the divers fill out. Upon return to the boat data sheets are checked by the lead diver to ensure accuracy and readability for the first quality control check.
| Study Extent | The Kelp Forest Monitoring data record span surveys across 28 years from 1971 through 2023 at 20 locations on the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast, Northern California. Years without data, inclusive: 1972-1985, 1987, 1988, 1993-1998, 2002, 2020, 2021. These surveys are ongoing and are conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife dive team with participation from dive program partners at UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly Humboldt, Sonoma State and other dive programs and volunteers. Not all sites were surveyed in all years. Surveys prior to 2003 were not conducted by the same teams or with the same methods except that all surveys were done using Scuba along 30 x 2m transects randomly placed in the subtidal zone in rocky habitats dominated by bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, forests. These randomly placed band transects surveys were stratified by depth (A=0-15, B=16-30, C=31-45, D=46-60 ft) as we know sea urchin and abalone populations differ by depth. |
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Method step description:
- For a detailed description of the methods, see the .RTF metadata files at this link: https://opc.dataone.org/view/doi:10.25494/P66W3J
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 0a9abcfb-2ac6-44b3-b241-ca66eff99b76 |
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| https://obis.org/dataset/7e76e65e-a60b-453e-bc2d-ac699241e9e6 | |
| https://ipt-obis.gbif.us/resource?r=bullkelp_ecosystem_monitoring_norcal |