Data presented in the paper “Maintaining Tropical Beaches with Seagrass and Algae: A Promising Alternative to Engineering Solutions”

The ability of seagrasses and calcifying macroalgae to protect beaches against erosion was investigated with in situ experimental measurements of a lagoon in St Martin, Caribbean and long term monitoring of beach profiles along the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Threshold shear velocity values of different vegetation patches were collected with a portable uni-directional field flume, and the time that stained sediment stayed in place in different patches within the lagoon are used as a measure of sediment stabilisation by the vegetated communities. Sediment grain size of the study areas are also reported. Regular beach profiles of Cancun and Puerto Morelos in Mexico, measured with dGPS, are reported from June 2008 - March 2012.