Coral reef community data were collected from eight reef sites. At each site, five 50m transects were laid on the reef at 3m depth and a photograph of a 0.5m x 0.5m quadrat was taken every meter. All transects were conducted in 2010, except for those from Risong Bay, which were conducted in 2012.
Average coral and algae cover, coral richness, and coral diversity from 8 coral reef sites in Palau.
\nFor more information, see main article and supporting information (including figures and tables) from:
\nBarkley et al. (2015), DeCarlo et al. (2015), and Shamberger et al. (2014).
Photographs of the benthic community were analyzed using Coral Point Count with Excel extensions.\u00a0 Benthic cover of each photograph was evaluated by randomly overlaying five crosses on each image and identifying the type of cover and taxa underneath each cross, with all corals identified to the genus level, for a total of 200 points evaluated per transect and 1000 points evaluated per site. Percent cover (coral, macroalgae, and crustose coralline algae) and community ecological indices (genera richness, Shannon diversity, and Shannon evenness) were calculated for each of the five transects per reef site.
\nSee the supplementary information from Shamberger et al. (2014) for more information.