This projects primary goal was to provide data on occurrence and abundance of SAV resources within the fresh to saline coastal waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico, and to relate these findings to key environmental variables. The data set provides the collected data from 2013, 2014 and 2015 on site location, discrete water quality, aquatic vegetation cover and biomass by species. The same 384 sites were collected each year, between June and September.

This data set consists of GIS data documenting the location, species composition, and other habitat characteristics of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in coastal Alabama. This was collected as part of a remote sensing investigation of SAV distribution using summer and fall ortho imagery as base maps.

This data set includes bi-monthly data on submerged aquatic vegetation species composition, percent cover, above and below ground biomass and environmental data at coastal sites across the fresh to saline gradient in Barataria Bay, LA.

This data set includes bi-monthly data on submerged aquatic vegetation species composition, percent cover, above and below ground biomass and environmental data at coastal sites across the fresh to saline gradient in Barataria Bay, LA.

The Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) contracted Barry A. Vittor and Associates, Inc. to conduct digital aerial image surveys of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in and around Mobile Bay, Alabama in 2002. Two data sets were the result: digital vector data from imagery collected during summer 2002, and GPS field points data collected between July 2002 and April 2003 to groundtruth the imagery.

Digitized maps of Mobile Bay and other coastal areas of Alabama, showing habitat types and species compositions of the vegetation in three broad categories of wetland: swamps, marshes, and submersed grassbeds. All areas in the Alabama Coastal Zone of less than 10 feet elevation above sea level, up to the fork of the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers, were included in the inventory. Habitat boundary delineations were based on aerial photographs from 1979 and 1980, with transects by boat or foot for field verification in 1980-1982. Dataset includes habitat type classifications based on species compositions, and identifications of dominant species at each location.

This USGS Data Release represents geospatial data sets which were created to produce an Unvegetated to Vegetated Ratio (UVVR) for coastal wetlands of the conterminous United States (2014-2018). The following listed image products were generated 1) Annual spatial datasets (rasters) from 2014 to 2018 each containing 4 bands (Band 1: Unvegetated land fraction; Band 2: Vegetated land fraction; Band 3: Water fraction; Band 4: UVVR clipped into 3 coastal regions (Atlantic (ATL) Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and Pacific (PAC). 2) Calibration/Validation Datasets - datasets which were used in the calibration and validation of the above datasets 3) Mean of masked, multiyear composite - Mean vegetated fraction in coastal wetlands in each region 4) Standard deviation of masked, multiyear composite - Standard deviation of the vegetated fraction in coastal wetlands in each region 5) Unvegetated to Vegetated Ratio (UVVR) based on masked, multiyear composite - Unvegetated to Vegetated Ratio in coastal wetlands in each region The data release was produced in compliance with the new 'open data' requirements as a way to make the scientific products associated with USGS research efforts and publications available to the public.

This data release includes geospatial data for irregularly flooded wetlands and high marsh and salt pannes/flats along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Texas to Florida. Specifically, this release includes seven products: (1) a map highlighting the continuous probability that an area is an irregularly flooded wetland; (2) a map of irregularly flooded wetland probability reclassified into four bins; (3) a map delineating high marsh and salt pannes/flats; (4) a map from Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana to the Florida Big Bend delineating the coverage of irregularly flooded wetlands that have Juncus roemerianus (Black needlerush) as the dominant vegetation species; (5) a spatial metadata file showing what elevation data were used for specific locations; (6) a supplemental version of the high marsh and salt pannes/flats map that has a second class for high marsh for parts of Texas where succulents and Distichlis spicata were dominant species; and (7) a dataset of supplemental project-specific field reference data collected throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico coast. Collectively, the products in this data release were developed using a two-step approach that utilized the best-available elevation data and satellite data from 2018 to 2020. The first step in the process was to create a probabilistic map of irregularly flooded wetlands using light detection and ranging (lidar)-derived digital elevation models (DEMs), tidal datums, and nuisance flooding levels. Monte Carlo simulations were used to propagate uncertainty in elevation-based data, and existing land cover data were used to restrict the output to coastal wetland areas. Due to the focus of this study on high marsh, these coastal wetland areas did not include tidal forested fresh wetlands. The second step was to delineate high marsh and salt pannes/flats using reference data which included project-specific data collection in collaboration with land managers and other ancillary datasets across the northern Gulf of Mexico coast. These data were combined with Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar imagery, multispectral optical satellite imagery from Sentinel-2, DEMs, and the irregularly flooded wetland probability layer to generate a contemporary map of high marsh and salt pannes/flats along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast. This product is the first regional map of these wetland systems across the northern Gulf of Mexico coast.

These datasets were created from high-resolution (1-m) datasets representing median conditions during a 2014-2019 time period. These datasets used National Agricultural Inventory Program (NAIP) imagery, as well as Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, to estimate the fractional composition of unvegetated, vegetated, and water in each pixel. Random samples from these high resolution datasets were used to inform calibration and validation of the moderate resolution (30-m) Landsat datasets. To facilitate comparability with the Landsat datasets, these data were aggregated up to 30-m resolution.

Prior research has shown that sediment budgets, and therefore stability, of microtidal marsh complexes scale with areal unvegetated to vegetated marsh ratios (UVVR) suggesting these metrics are broadly applicable indicators of microtidal marsh vulnerability. This effort has developed the UVVR metric using readily available satellite imagery for the coastal areas of the contiguous United States (CONUS). These datasets provide annual averages of the 1) unvegetated fraction, 2) vegetated fraction, 3) water fraction and 4) an unvegetated to vegetated ratio (UVVR) at 30-meter resolution over the coastal areas of the contiguous United States for the year 2002. Additionally, multi-year average values of vegetated ratio, its standard deviation and a UVVR based on the annually-averaged vegetated ratio are provided for the coastal wetlands of the contiguous United States.