Tampa Bay Seagrass Recovery Monitoring Since the 1980s

This dataset documents the recovery of seagrass coverage in Tampa Bay, Florida, since the 1980s, following a major restoration program. It tracks progress towards a goal of restoring seagrass to 1950s levels, which was achieved in 2016 with 16,857 hectares reported. The data supports ongoing monitoring and assessment of seagrass extent and composition.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in total seagrass extent over time to evaluate the impact of over 450 restoration projects.
• Assess changes in seagrass bed composition to guide current and future management efforts.
• Correlate seagrass recovery metrics with documented ancillary benefits for ecosystem service valuation.

Strengths

• Documents a long-term recovery effort spanning from the 1980s to at least 2016.
• Supports a major restoration goal that was achieved, with 16,857 hectares of seagrass reported in 2016.
• Informs management based on ongoing monitoring of both total extent and composition.

Limitations

• Specific data structure, column names, and sample size are unknown.
• The dataset's last known update was in 2019, which may limit analysis of recent trends.

Provenance

Source

Edward T. Sherwood via Dryad.

Collection Method

Ongoing monitoring and assessments of seagrass beds.

Time Range

Since the 1980s, with specific data points through at least 2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2019-09-21.

Geography

Tampa Bay, Florida, USA.