Data for: Development of a learning community focused on sea-level rise and coastal habitat change

Rapid habitat changes are occuring in salt marshes located in the Northeastern United States, including expansion of ponded areas on the marsh platform, die off of coastal forests, and subsequent colonization of 'ghost forests' by marsh vegetation. This work focuses on two main areas: (1) environmental conditions along the marsh forest border undergoing rapid transitions; and (2) environmental conditions and plant stress on marsh platforms with extensive and expanding ponding. 
To better understand drivers of environmental change in marsh-forest borders undergoing rapid transitions, we measured shallow groundwater levels,  soil salinity, and forest health and structure along the salt marsh-upland border at three sites (in NJ, NY, MA) with varying slopes using installation of shallow groundwater wells, drone imagery and associated image processing, and geophysical methods. To better understand drivers of environmental change on the marsh platform, we again focused on three sites (in NJ, ..., We collected biological and environmental data to provide perspective on rapid habitat change occurring at the salt marsh-forest ecotone and on salt marsh platforms converting to open water in the Northeastern United States, and to test hypotheses about drivers of habitat change.
Marsh-Forest Ecotone
In studying the marsh forest border, we chose to work at three locations where the marsh-forest ecotone is undergoing rapid habitat transitions: the Tuckahoe Wildlife Management Area, Egg Harbor Township, NJ (39° 19.506'N;  74° 39.014'W), Pine Neck Preserve, Quogue, NY (40° 50.440'N;  72° 33.785'W), and around Sage Lot Pond, Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mashpee, MA (41° 33.438'N; 70° 30.227'W). We hypothesized that we would see steeper environmental gradients in New England than along the coastal plain. In addition, we hoped that these data sets would provide perspective on salt water intrusion vs. root zone flooding as important drivers of maritime forest dieback.
Drone..., , # Data for: Development of a learning community focused on sea-level rise and coastal habitat change

We have presented data for two areas: (1) the marsh-forest ecotone; (2) the marsh platform.

## Description of the data and file structure

*Marsh-forest Ecotone*

The follow datafiles are available for this study:

1\. water levels

ecotone \_water_levels_metadata.csv

ecotone_water_levels_waquoit.csv

ecotone_water_levels_pine_neck.csv

ecotone_water_levels_tuckahoe.csv

ecotone \_water_levels_metadata.csv - This file has locations and metadata for the well data from 30 wells positioned along the marsh-upland ecotone. The fields include Well ID, location, latitude, longitude, installation_day, installation_month, installation_year, inner_diameter, outer_diameter, well_top_elevation, top_of_well_to_soil, soil_elevation, start_day, start_month, start_year, end_day, end_month, and end_year. The field Well ID has names of wells, where P stands for Pine Neck, T stands for Tuckahoe, and W...