Giant kelp forests act as natural barriers to motorboat noise: Dataset

Description of the data and file structure

The "GiantKelpForestData" dataset includes the following sheets:

"SPL": Contains sound pressure level (SPL) data along with the following variables:

"year"; "area"; "transect"; "distance_hydrophone_boat" for LMM 

"HydrophoneCalibration": Contains SPL values for each boat pass recorded by each hydrophone to compare the hydrophones with an ANOVA

"KelpDensity": Includes the number of individual kelp counted in each quadrant (2 per transect point) to estimate density

"N°Pneumatocyst": Records the height of kelp plants where pneumatocysts were counted to estimate density

The "PSD_kelp" and "PSD_control" files contain power spectral density (PSD) values for each area (kelp forest and control) for the years 2022 and 2024. For visualization, the PSD values expressed in dB were used.

Files and variables

File: PSD_kelp.csv

Description: 
Variables

year: year of data collection

area: study area (kelp forest/control area)

transect: transect number 

point: point transect where measurements were taken

frequency: frequency in Hz 

psd (uPa): psd value in uPa

psd (dB): psd value in dB

File: PSD_control.csv

Description: 

year: year of data collection

area: study area (kelp forest/control area)

transect:  transect number 

point: point transect where measurements were taken

frequency:  frequency in Hz 

psd (uPa): psd value in uPa

psd (dB): psd value in dB

File: GianKelpForestData.xlsx

Description: 
Variables

year:  year of data collection

area:  study area (kelp forest/control area)

transect:  transect number

point: point transect where measurements were taken

superficial_distance: surface distance between the boat and the hydrophone's location

depth: hydrophone depth

distance_hydrophone_boat: Distance between the hydrophone and the boat, calculated using depth data and the surface distance between the boat and the hydrophone's location ("superficial_distance"). This value represents the hypotenuse.

SPL: sound pressure level value