WADFW PSAMP W2004

N/A

The metadata edits are in progress. Please contact the contact person for detail.

Aerial surveys of marine birds have been conducted annually since 1992 by the Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program (PSAMP) staff during both a summer (July) and a winter (December to early February) survey window, sampling some part of every portion of the marine shoreline of the inner marine waters of Washington state by two strata: nearshore (< 20 meters in depth) and offshore (> 20 meters in depth).

The datasets are split by season (summer or winter) and year.

The purpose of this program is to monitor population trends of either summer or winter resident species rather than migrations around Puget Sound.

[2020-09-30] The following invalid species names were corrected according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).
Bonaparte's Gull: Larus philadelphia (176839) => Chroicocephalus philadelphia (824040)
Anas oustaleti (202228) => Anas platyrhynchos (175063)
Larus tridactyla (176874) => Rissa tridactyla (176875)

Data correction Mar 17, 2006:
Wrong ITIS number for Unidentified Sea Lion
180623 -> 180615

Data correction Mar 14, 2006:
Wrong ITIS number for Unidentified [Large|Small] Gulls
180297 -> 176802

The nearshore strata were sampled in two fashions:
1)in nearshore habitat that was relatively narrow, the plane flew parallel to the shoreline generally 100 meters from the high tide line;
2)in nearshore habitat with broad extensive shallow areas such as river estuaries, the plane flew in an S-pattern to sample a larger proportion of the habitat available in that locality. The offshore strata were sampled in a crisscross pattern that zigzagged back and forth across depth contours, with an attempt made to cut across most all banks and similar major underwater bathymetric features. There was no attempt made to survey during the same tidal stage in these areas.

The survey always began in the southernmost study areas and proceeded to the northern portions; therefore the same areas were usually sampled during the same time of month each year, give or take a week. The last two summer surveys (1997-98) did not include the southern and central portions of Puget Sound, due to budget cuts. These areas were chosen to be continued on a less frequent basis because low and consistent numbers of birds were seen there during the July survey window in the previous five summer surveys.

Effort data is provided in separate files.

Overview

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
survey	Survey ID
lineno	Line No
date	Date of the observation
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
trip_numb	Trip number
line_numb	Line number
cloud_covr	Cloud cover
wind_knots	Wind in knots
wind_dir	Wind direction
beaufort	Beaufort Sea state
swell_ht	Swell height
swell_dir	swell direction
time	Time of the observation (local time)
on_off	On off effort
spcode	Species code
species	Species name
species_tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
scientific	Scientific name
group	Taxonomic group
herdsize	Group size
behavior	Behavior code
birddir	Bird direction
account	Account
age	Age
zone	Zone
sight_angl	Sighting angle
plumage	Plumage
dec_lat	Latitude in original format
dec_long	Lontidue in original format
temperture	Temperature
depth	Depth
slope	Slope
comment1	Comments 1
comment2	Comments 2
comment3	Comments 3
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)