Puerto Rico's coastal benthic habitats were mapped to support Antillean manatee recovery. The Sirenia Project conducted field assessments at 125 ground truthing sites in 1994 and 1995. Data includes site classification, depth, salinity, temperature, and manatee use observations.
Use Cases
- Modeling manatee habitat suitability using site classification, depth, and salinity data.
- Analyzing benthic community composition from dominant and subdominant community classifications.
- Mapping seagrass distribution for conservation planning using geospatial coordinates and habitat delineations.
- Assessing environmental influences on feeding sites using temperature, salinity, and site comment fields.
Strengths
- 125 ground truthing sites provide field-verified habitat classifications.
- Data integrates multiple sources: aerial photo interpretation, GPS coordinates, underwater photography, and direct measurements.
Limitations
- Dataset is temporally limited, with primary collection in 1994-1995.
- Geographic scope is restricted to approximately 52 kilometers of shoreline in eastern Puerto Rico.
- Sample size of 125 sites may not represent all habitat variability.
Provenance
- Source
- Sirenia Project, likely associated with CEOS_EXTRA and NASA Earthdata.
- Collection Method
- Computer-aided mapping from aerial photographs, field groundtruthing, GPS location, and direct water measurements.
- Time Range
- Primary data collection in October 1994 and June 1995; aerial imagery from December 1993.
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- U.S. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads shoreline, eastern Puerto Rico.