Seagrass thermal limits

The dataset compiles seagrass upper thermal limits (Tlimit) for survival, growth or biomass loss published in the literature and obtained by conducting a search on Web of Knowledge using the keywords combinations seagrass AND (temperature OR warming) and seagrass AND ("thermal limit" OR "thermal threshold" OR "critical temperature" OR "thermal niche???). The reference lists of the papers obtained with these searches were screened for additional relevant data. The dataset only includes data of seagrass populations growing submersed within their native geographical range. Tlimit are derived from empirical observations of seagrass die-off events attributed to heat waves, in combination with other simultaneous stressors (hypersalinity, Carlson et al 2018; low light availability, Moore and Jarvis 2008, Moore et al., 2014), or mesocosm experiments. Seagrasses in mesocosm experiments were exposed to at least 2 temperature treatments above average in situ summer temperature that extended the experimental thermal range beyond the Tlimit. Seagrasses were exposed to experimental temperatures for 6 to 120 days depending on the study. The Tlimit was defined as: a) the upper temperature at which shoot survival, shoot growth or biomass above optimal temperature started to decline in experimental studies; or b) the seawater temperature during the heat wave that triggered die-off events. For each study, the compiled dataset includes the species name, location and coordinates of the population studied, the Tlimit, the approach (i.e. experimental or empirical), the year the study was conducted and the data source. For experimental studies, the dataset also includes the temperature treatments seagrasses were exposed to. For each population studied, we obtained mean annual seawater temperature values for the 5 years before the thermal tolerance experiment or observation was conducted from the ORAS4 ocean reanalysis (Balmaseda, Mogensen, Weaver, 2013), which provides monthly 3D temperature global fields from 1958 to present with a spatial resolution of 1 degree in the horizontal and ~10 m in the vertical. Those temperatures aim at representing the regional characteristics, rather than the local features which cannot be captured by the coarse spatial resolution