LTER Georgia Coastal Ecosystems - Crab population monitoring: Fall 2001 mid-marsh and creekbank crab abundances based on hole counts at GCE marsh, sites 1-10

This data set is the first Fall estimate of crab densities at the GCE-LTER marsh sites used for population monitoring. Crab abundance was determined by counting the number of crab holes within a 625 cm^2 quadrat and converting the counts to number per square meter. Counts were made in the mid-marsh and creekbank zones (n = 4 per zone) at all sites. This method does not differentiate which species made a particular hole and therefore only estimates total crab abundance. Plugged holes were excluded from the counts. Mean density across all sites and zones was 342 m^-2 (+/- 158 s.d.). Overall bounding box describing the geographic region within the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER study domain represented in data set INV-GCEM-0210a