Redwood National and State Parks Subtidal Fish Survey - Progress Report Surveys Through December 2006

Mulligan, Tim; Lomeli, Mark

Redwood National and State Parks are located along the North West coast of California's Pacific Ocean, from Orick to Crescent City, encompassing 37 miles of coastline. The parks coastline is diverse in its overall geology and landscape, leading to an equally diverse numbers of habitats. These different habitats lead to a wide range of ecological communities with a large number of species. The park, contracted through a cooperative agreement with Humboldt State University scientists, has decided to fund an examination of the habitat and diversity of intertidal animals along the parks coastline, through a coastal inventory project beginning in the summer of 2005 and running through the completion of this inventory, in January of 2007. The results of this study will be integrated into a database that includes Gis information. Field data collection followed a protocol that came from the melding of two different protocols, both from similar projects: (I) the first project done for Glacier Bay National Park, and (2) the other for Point Reyes National Seashore. During low tide windows throughout the summer of 2005 a research team walked the coast delineating segments based on geomorphologic features and collecting data on physical and biological attributes. Data collected included photos and GIs points for each segment as well as many biological and physical observations (see methods for details), and specimens. At this point over a hundred segments have been sampled and over 300 pictures taken. The sampling will continue this summer (2006) when the summer negative low tide season begins (May 15"', 2006). Throughout 2006 the data will be used to compile a Microsoft Access database, offering a user-friendly tool to exainine the parks' coastal biotic and physical diversity. This will allow park biologists to look at trends in species diversity, locate bio-diversity hotspots and unique habitats, collect baseline information on the species found along the parks' coast, and build a current specimen collection.

Redwood National and State Parks Subtidal Fish Survey - Progress Report Surveys Through December 2006

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