MARINe/PISCO: Intertidal: MARINe Coastal Biodiversity Surveys: Point Contact Surveys Summarized

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 429 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:

Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe), Partnership Interdisciplinary Studies Coastal Oceans for of (PISCO), Hakai Institute, & Pete Raimondi. (2025). MARINe/PISCO: Intertidal: MARINe Coastal Biodiversity Surveys: Point Contact Surveys Summarized. PISCO MN. doi:10.6085/AA/marine_cbs.5.7.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Geological Survey. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 58ffefab-20aa-4cec-b0c0-dd7330ed7280.  United States Geological Survey publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Ocean; Intertidal Processes; Intertidal Zone; Marine Biology; Marine Invertebrates; Marine Plants; Marine Habitat; Biosphere; Aquatic Habitats; Coastal Habitat; Community Survey Data; Intertidal Data; Intertidal Community Survey Data; Intertidal Coastal Biodiversity Survey; SWAT Survey; Baseline MPA monitoring; Long-term MPA monitoring; Marine Protected Area (MPA); Biological data; Central Coast; North Central Coast; North Coast; South Coast; Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe); Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO); Algae; Invertebrates; Samplingevent

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Biodiversity Surveys are done at sites ranging from southeast Alaska to Baja California, Mexico.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

MARINe is a partnership of agencies, universities, and private groups who conduct long-term monitoring of rocky intertidal ecosystems on the US West Coast

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Point Point Contact methods photoContact sampling consists of noting the diversity and abundance of invertebrates and algae by recording what is found directly underneath or in the near vicinity of 100 points on each transect. Algae and invertebrate species, hosts and epiphytes, layering, and substrate characteristics are all taken into account. Each transect is surveyed using the point intercept method. Ideally, 100 points per transect are sampled. At each point three organisms are identified. This results in approximately 3,300 data points per site. Sampling intervals are determined based on the length of the bench. The organism that falls directly under each point is recorded first. Then the next two closest, but always different, organisms are recorded. Organisms living on another species are recorded as 'epibionts' and the organism they occur on is recorded as 'host.' Some examples of host organisms are mussels, coralline algae, barnacles, and colonial worms. If an organism under a point cannot be identified in the field, we assign it an "unknown" number and collect a sample to identify later in the lab. In 2017, we upgraded from using Palm Pilots to iPad mini's in order to expedite data recording and entry. MARINe contracted DiveNav to create an app specifically designed for the biodiversity protocol which includes regional species templates and error-checking features. Waterproof cases allow the iPads to function safely in the intertidal zone and in any type of weather. Data collected in the field are stored as CSV files and uploaded to the Coastal Biodiversity Surveys database.

Method step description:

1. https://marine.ucsc.edu/methods/index.html

Additional Metadata