Description: Ground validation locations where benthic habitat assessments were made in the field by hiking to many sites at low tide, kayaking, swimming, or boating to sites, and using a glass bottom look box, free diving, video drop camera or observing from the surface.
Description: Seven classes were used to denote the approximate proportion of each polygon occupied by hard bottom substrate. A polygon encompassing several patch reefs that were too small to be delineated individually is actually comprised of some area of patch reefs and some background structure such as sand. This category includes both “living” hard bottom such as patch reefs, as well as “abiotic” features such as pavement and rock/boulder. This attribute can be used to estimate the combined amount of coral reef and hard bottom around the island based on the area of each polygon.
Description: Fourteen distinct and non-overlapping geomorphologic structures could be mapped by visual interpretation of satellite imagery. Structure refers only to predominant physical composition of the feature and does not address location (see Zone for shore to shelf edge location). The structure types are defined in a collapsible hierarchy ranging from four major classes (Coral Reef and Hardbottom, Unconsolidated Substrate, Other Delineations, and Unknown), to fifteen detailed classes.
Description: Eleven mutually exclusive zones were identified, from land to deep ocean, corresponding to typical atoll geomorphology. These zones included: Land, Shoreline Intertidal, Reef Flat, Lagoon, Back Reef, Fore Reef, Bank/Shelf, Bank/Shelf Escarpment, Channel, Pinnacle, Dredged/Excavated, and Unknown. Zone refers only to each benthic community’s location and does not address substrate or structure types that are found within. For example, the Lagoon zone may include patch reefs, sand, and reef rubble; however, these are considered structural elements that may or may not occur within the lagoon zone and therefore, are not used to define it.