Figure 1.
Martin County quantitative ground validation sites overlaying the benthic habitat polygons.
Dives at sites 1, 2, and 7 were abandoned due to strong current. Data sources: Land imagery is 2000 USGS Digital Orthophoto Quads mosaicked and provided by the South Florida Water Management District. The habitat map was a result of this study. Grey hill-shaded lidar data were collected by Tenix LADS in 2002 and provided by Palm Beach County Environmental Resource Management.
Table 1.
Martin County Benthic Habitat Areas (km2).
Figure 2.
Multidimensional scaling plot of percent cover data for all benthic characterization surveys.
Table 2.
One way analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) results of benthic cover data by habitat types.
Figure 3.
Percent benthic cover data averaged across all sites in the same mapped habitat.
Error bars represent one standard deviation.
Table 3.
Error matrix for Major Habitat.
Table 4.
Error matrix for Major Habitat using individual cell probabilities (Pij).
Table 5.
Error matrix for Detailed Habitat.
Table 6.
Error matrix for Detailed Habitat using individual cell probabilities (Pij).
Figure 4.
Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot of Bray-Curtis similarity matrix of 248 regional cross-shelf transects displayed using the six final regional categories.
The outlines represent 60% similarity from the cluster analysis.
Figure 5.
Overview maps showing the cross-shelf transects symbolized by the 60% similarity MDS clusters (left) and the six identified regions (right).
BFZ = Bahamas Fault Zone. Data sources: Land imagery is 2000 USGS Digital Orthophoto Quads mosaicked and provided by the South Florida Water Management District. The habitat map was a result of this and previous studies by the author (See Walker et al. (2008) and Walker (2012)). Grey hill-shaded lidar data were collected by Tenix LADS in 2001 and 2002. Lidar data were provided by Miami-Dade County Environmental Resource Management, Broward County Natural Resources Planning and Management Division, Palm Beach Environmental Resource Management, and Coastal Planning and Engineering. Martin lidar were collected as part of this study.
Table 7.
A summary of the analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) pairwise test between the six identified biogeographic regions.
Figure 6.
Three-dimensional image of the Nearshore Ridge Complex ((NRC) Ridge-Shallow and Colonized Pavement-Shallow habitats) south of St. Lucie inlet with the quantitative groundtruthing site locations.
The depth profile shows a cross-shelf surface contour of the flatter colonized pavement on the left (west), the ridge right of center, and the sand on the right (east). The ridge in this area exhibits a 7 m drop in elevation over an 800 ft distance. Data sources: Grey hillshaded Lidar were created in this study. Imagery includes NASA Blue Marble: Next Generation 500 m resolution imagery at small scales and i-cubed 15 m eSAT imagery at medium-to-large scales for the world. The map also includes i-cubed Nationwide Prime 1 m or better resolution imagery for the contiguous United States. I-cubed Nationwide Prime is a seamless, color mosaic of various commercial and government imagery sources, including Aerials Express 0.3 to 0.6 m resolution imagery for metropolitan areas and the best available United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery and enhanced versions of USGS Digital Ortho Quarter Quad (DOQQ) imagery for other areas.
Figure 7.
Illustration depicting the hydrodynamics along the southeast Florida coast.
A combination of the Florida Current ushering the warmest water offshore, frequent cold water upwelling, and relatively cooler coastal waters off north of Palm Beach County may inhibit a future coral reef poleward shift. Data sources: Land is USGS/EROS Global 30 Arc-second elevation data. Florida Reef Tract is a combination of 2001 FWC-FWRI, NOAA, and Dade County map and the maps created by Walker et al. (2008) and Walker (2012).