Open-Access Databases from the Santa Barbara Coastal and Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Sites

The NSF-funded Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC) and Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites collect ecosystem time series data in combination with process-oriented research.  Products include publically available data of interest to a wide range of users including fisheries biologists.   Data focuses on whole ecosystem dynamics while also capturing those of individual species including fish and major habitat-providers (e.g., corals, algae).  Examples of process-oriented studies include describing food vs. habitat driven recruitment and survival in fish, long and short-term regulation of nearshore biogenic habitats, and effects of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics on quantity and quality of riverine discharge into the ocean. Long-term data products include continuous, physical oceanographic data (currents, salinity, temperature, ocean pH, etc. ) from moored instruments, shipboard sampling and autonomous gliders, survey data of fish, coral, other invertebrates, and algae, and biomass of giant kelp derived from satellite imagery. Synthetic work utilizing these data includes direct application to the development of marine protected areas along the California coast and estimating impacts of climate change on temperate and tropical reef ecosystems.  The open-access to long-term data anchored in a broadly focused, high-resolution physical and biological context, make LTER data particularly useful for synthetic and meta-analytic frameworks.