Shear Stress, Biomass, Bulk Density, Organic Matter on the Bank of the York River, VA 2018

This dataset includes data used to assess marsh vulnerability to sea-level rise by quantifying marsh erodibility along a salinity gradient in the York River in southeastern Virginia. We measured the erodibility of marshes along a salinity gradient in the York River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay (Virginia, USA). We chose five marshes along the York River salinity gradient for this study. Salinity decreases upriver from 18 ppt at the Goodwin Islands to 0 ppt at the Pamunkey Indian Reservation. Within these overall sites, we chose sampling locations along tidal creeks 5-10 m wide, with marsh widths beyond 20 meters and consistent elevations across all study sites. We collected samples from both the tidal channel marsh edge and from the marsh interior. Edge sites were located between the tidal channel and any levee (1 m from edge), while interior sites were located at a measured distance of 10-12 m away from the edge site. All field work was done in July-August 2018, except for the collection of cores for belowground biomass at the Sweet Hall Marsh and Pamunkey Indian Reservation marsh edge sites (September 2018) and elevation profiles of the Pamunkey Indian Reservation (March 2020). Data tables are: 1) shear strength, 2) aboveground biomass, 3) belowground biomass, 4) LOI (loss on ignition), 5) kinematic GPS data along the transects and 6) averages for each station of variables in tables 1, 3 and 4.