National Coral Reef Monitoring Program: Benthic Complexity and Urchin Abundance of Climate Stations at Wake Island from 2014-03-16 to 2014-03-20 (NCEI Accession 0159160)

The benthic complexity and urchin abundance monitoring effort provides baselines for tracking these variables at NCRMP climate stations. Climate stations are 3-4 sites per island that were selected in a stratified random fashion to be roughly equally spaced around the island, along the 15 m contour, on hard bottom, and at least 1 km away from a river mouth or embayment. Once selected we assess multiple features of the coral reef environment including in-situ temperature (STR), seawater carbonate, net carbonate accretion (CAU), bioerosion (BMU), and cryptobiota diversity (ARMS).
Structural complexity is known to be an important component in coral reef ecosystems. Ecosystem relationships that correlate with structural complexity include reef fish density and biomass, live and branching coral cover, urchin abundance and algal cover (Graham and Nash 2013). In many cases, the benthic complexity is an important indicator of benthic and fish communities.
The data were collected around the Pacific Remote Island Areas as part of the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) led mission in 2014.