Groundtruthing notes and biological data from coral ecosystems surveys for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Rapid Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, 2000 - 2002 (NCEI Accession 0001448)

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (NOWRAMP) began in 2000 with the mission to rapidly evaluate and map the shallow water reef habitats in the NWHI. Utilizing two research vessels Rapture and NOAA Ship Townsend Cromwell, researchers spent 30 days at sea visiting each of the ten major islands, atolls and reefs in the remote region of the Hawaiian archipelago. This dataset is a small subset from these cruises. It includes spreadsheet data files on habitats, coral cores, coral species, substrate types, and substrate type percent bottom cover. A descriptive document is also included which was the basis for groundtruthing images from remote sensing. These descriptions give a wide range of information on coral and reef fish species abundance and distribution.