EMPA 2021 Vegetative Cover

The overall goal of the Estuary Marine Protected Area (EMPA) Monitoring Program is to establish a monitoring framework, including data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting to determine the health of estuaries in California and the efficacy of MPA designation in estuaries. As part of the initial phases of the program, we developed standard protocols to assess key estuarine features across different estuaries, coupled with standard data templates and guidance on analysis, synthesis, and reporting, focused on four guiding principles: flexibility, comparability, interpretability, and practicality. We developed 14 SOPs and piloted the framework at 15 estuaries in 2021. For more details on the EMPA program and framework, see https://empa.sccwrp.org. This dataset includes the vegetation cover data collected from the marsh plain, as illustrated in SOP 11. Two to three 25-m transects were conducted at each sampling station within an estuary. Each transect was conducted across a different elevational zone: low, mid, and high. At each transect, the percent cover by species of vegetation was identified within five 1-m2 quadrats. The tallest plant of each species was recorded. For more details, see SOP 11 on https://empa.sccwrp.org. To simplify data usability, fields from both data and metadata tables have been combined to provide the user with a merged dataset. The metadata table is also included in standalone format.