Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS) net primary productivity (NPP) on salt marsh sites at Morecambe Bay and Essex

Net primary productivity (NPP) was measured as an above ground vegetation sample (cut at ground level) of 50 centimetre (cm) x 25 cm inside grazer exclusion cages during the summer 2013 sampling period (after all above ground vegetation removed from 50 cm x 25 cm area in winter 2013). NPP was calculated from each quadrat by scaling up the mass of the dry vegetation to kg per square metre per year. Vegetation cut in field then dried at 60 degrees Celsius for 72 hours. Results were recorded onto field sheets. These data were transferred into an Excel file and calculations carried out. Results were exported as comma separated value files for ingestion into the EIDC. The location of the sample sites was determined by randomly allocated quadrats. Each site consisted of a rectangular area of saltmarsh between 400 x 500 metre (m) to 1000 x 1000 m in size, dependent upon saltmarsh length (parallel to shore) and width (perpendicular to shore), including part of the low, mid and high marsh zones. Twenty two 1 x 1 m quadrats were randomly allocated to each site rectangle using R (R Development Core Team, 2014) to specify four different spatial scales (A = 1 quadrat only, B = 3 quadrats at 1 m to 10 m apart, C = 6 quadrats at 10 m to 100 m apart, D = 12 quadrats at 100 m to 1000 m or site maximum).

This dataset is included in the following collections

Biological, ecological and physical data collected from salt marsh and mudflat sites on the West and East coast of England during the winter and summer of 2013 by the Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS) project