GRID-based habitat plot data for the public nesting sea turtle beach of Pacuare, Caribean Sea, Costa Rica July of 2013

Abstract

This GRID habitat survey was done at a globally relevant public sea turtle nesting beach: Pacuare (Playa Vigilada). It is situated at the Caribean Sea in Costa Rica ((latitude10.20123 longitude 83.25925; geographic datum WGS84). We did our grid-based habitat survey on 18th of July in 2013. The individual GRID points are geo-referenced by latitude and longitude (decimal degrees, +- 10 meters acuracy) and were visited only once (no 3 repeats because it consists of sand and private property) and no species information was taken (sand beach habitat). From 25 regular GRID points 15 were inaccessable because the nearby jungle and reserve. We took photos for every point (horizontally, ground and sky), more details can be seen there. This grid can for instance be used for change detection, shoreline location, develeopment, and beach erosion questions over time for turtle nest habitat. Known and observed sea turtles to occur for this region are Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea TSN 173843), and presumably Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata TSN 208666) and the Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas TSN 173833). This dataset is in an MS Excel format and is less than 1MB in size.