| Summary: | Long-Term Monitoring and Biodiversity Surveys done by the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe) occur throughout the year at sites ranging from Southeast Alaska to Mexico. Long Term Monitoring surveys assess within-site community change over time, while Biodiversity surveys were designed to capture among-site patterns of community structure (abundance and spatial distribution of species). In combination, the long-term, targeted species approach and the biodiversity surveys provide a wealth of information about the structure and dynamics of rocky intertidal communities along the Pacific Coast of North America. This metadata record documents the Swath surveys for the MARINe Biodiversity Surveys. Biodiversity surveys are comprised of four components, all sampled along the same transects: (1) point contact estimates of intertidal cover and substrate characteristics, (2) swath transects to estimate the density of seastars and abalone, (3) quadrat sampling to estimate the density of mobile invertebrates, and (4) topography (elevation relative to mean low low water (mllw)). Selected sites are resampled on a 3-5 year cycle. A site is defined as a contiguous rocky bench of at least 30m. Swath sampling consists of recording the number of seastars and abalone on eleven 2m wide transects of variable length extending from the upper intertidal to the low intertidal. Please note that species of concern have been removed from all public datasets, as well as data from sites funded by the National Park Service (NPS) and the United States Navy. For a comprehensive dataset, please contact the data set owner(s). For more information about the data described in this metadata record, please visit pacificrockyintertidal.org. The long-term California MPA boundary and project info tables referenced in this dataset can be found as a separate dataset here: https://opc.dataone.org/view/doi:10.25494/P6V884
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