Coral reef ecosystem marine protected area monitoring in Fagamalo, American Samoa: benthic cover derived from analysis of benthic images collected during belt transect surveys of coral demography from 2015-10-26 to 2015-11-13 (NCEI Accession 0169724)

In 2010 the village of Fagamalo, Tutuila, American Samoa, designated a no-take Marine Protected Area that sees the protection of 2.25 square kilometers of ocean. Because little is known regarding the status of living marine communities in the area, and at the request of the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, NOAA scientists conducted surveys to assess the status of the benthic communities and establish a baseline against which to compare temporal change.

The benthic cover data described here were generated from the quantitative analysis of photoquadrat benthic images using image analysis software, whereby random points are projected on each image and the benthic elements falling directly underneath each point are identified. The images were collected at 18 randomly selected stratified sites in Fagamalo in 2015 during belt transect surveys of coral demography by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP).

The benthic cover data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive. The benthic images and coral demography data are described and archived separately.