Global patterns and drivers of seagrass biomass, net primary production and meadow structure

We decipher global patterns in seagrass growth and structure to advance seagrass science, facilitate multidisciplinary research, and promote effective management strategies and policy development for seagrass habitats. A global data set on seagrass total biomass, total NPP, shoot density, and percent cover was compiled for 11 genera. Here, we tested how these variables change across seagrass genera, life-history strategy, and geographic location, and then sought to decipher the environmental drivers of the patterns observed. The mean (±SE) total biomass of seagrasses globally was estimated at 340 ± 10 g DW m -2, and total NPP was estimated at 5.4 ± 0.4 g DW m -2 d-1. Mean shoot density across all genera was 1,780 ± 67 shoots m-2, and percent cover was 42 ± 1%. Persistent genera showed the highest total biomass, followed by opportunistic and then colonising genera, whereas shoot density was higher for colonising than for persistent, which had the highest percent cover..., , # Global patterns and drivers of seagrass biomass, net primary production and meadow structure

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhh1](10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhh1)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data file of metadata and seagrass variables extracted from studies looking at seagrass productivity and structure from 1975-2024 and environmental variable data from Bio-ORACLE v2.0 (2000-2014).\
Empty cells denoted that data was not available.

R script for processing analysis and graphing 

### Files and variables

#### File: Final_code_analysis_and_plotting.R

**Description:** Code for analysing and plotting data. This R script imports and cleans a seagrass dataset, adds biological and geographic classifications,customize the appearance of the ggplot map and counts the number of non-missing observations of total productivity per genus.

#### File: Dataset_ecological_biomass_complete.csv

**Description:**  Seagrass ecology variable data collected from meta-analyses including inf...,