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more about
study sites making of the logo
benthic cover
about 2.1 Reformat raw benthic cover data 2.2 Cross-reference benthic codes 2.3 percentage cover of main benthic categories 2.4 percentage cover of coral genera 2.5 percentage cover of coral species 2.6 percentage cover of coral trait groups 2.7 percentage cover of algae taxa 2.8 percentage cover of sponge morphs 2.9 percentage cover of zoanthids and gorgonians 2.10 percentage cover of other benthic categories
internal drivers
3.1 coral health 3.2 coral interactions 3.3 fish biodiversity 3.3b fish biodiversity using NOAA data 3.4 herbivory 3.5 coral biodiversity 3.6 diadema 3.7 nuisance species
external drivers
4.1 site rugosity 4.2 site depth 4.3 site distances from shore 4.4 daily temperatures 4.5 monthly and annual DHW and temperature 4.6 currents 4.7 management 4.8 wave benthic orbital velocities pt 1 4.9 wave benthic orbital velocities pt 2 4.10 water quality 4.11 sedimentation 4.12 connectivity
resilience values
5.1 absolute and relative coral cover and diversity 5.2 resilience classification based on coral cover 5.3 benthic community: benthic organisms 5.4 NMDS of coral genera during recovery period
Reproductive Mode & RarityOlinger et al., In Review
Overview TCRMP VINPS CSUN Octocorals Interactive
2023, 2024 Bleaching EventOlinger et al. In Prep
VI Reef Resilience StudyOlinger et al. Coming Soon
(Any Others?)co-author suggestions welcome

4.2 Site depth

Last updated

July 6, 2026

4.2 Site depth

On this page

This page reports the seafloor depth of the RRS study sites across all three monitoring programs (TCRMP, VINPS, CSUN). Depth is a fixed, per-site external driver rather than a time series, so the page reports one depth per site instead of a trend. It reads the site master catalog, lists every site (Table 1), computes descriptive depth statistics (Table 2), and draws a histogram of the depth distribution (Figure 1). It writes one per-site depth product, siteDepth (program, site, depth), offered in the Downloads section below.

Data sources

Site depths come from the RRS site master table, one row per site across the three monitoring programs (TCRMP, VINPS, and CSUN). The derived per-site depth file produced here, holding only the program, site, and depth columns for sites first surveyed no later than the site-added cutoff, is available in the Downloads section below.

Import data

We load the master catalog of USVI RRS sites into sitedat.

Show code
sitedat <-
  read.csv(
    "../../../RRSdata/00_RRS_dataCatalogStatus/00_RRS_siteMaster_allSites_data.csv"
  )

Study sites

Table 1 lists every study site with its catalog attributes. The table scrolls horizontally because it is a wide diagnostic listing.

Show code
kbl(sitedat[, 1:11]) |>
  kable_paper(full_width = F) |>
  kable_styling(
    fixed_thead = T,
    bootstrap_options = c("hover", "condensed"),
    font_size = 8
  ) |>
  scroll_box(width = "200%", height = "250px")
Sec 4.2 Table 1: Study sites in the RRS catalog, showing the first 11 catalog columns.
program site site_code island yearadded lat lon depth dist_from_shore rugosity rugosity_year
TCRMP Great Pond GRP STX 2003 17.71097 -64.65221 4.0000 1267.471121 1.104118 2011
TCRMP Brewers Bay BWR STT 2002 18.34403 -64.98435 6.0000 165.606733 1.587997 2011
TCRMP Fish Bay FSB STJ 2002 18.31417 -64.76408 6.0000 122.463857 1.265016 2011
TCRMP Castle CST STX 2003 17.76278 -64.59743 7.0000 637.673130 1.403704 2011
TCRMP Coculus Rock CKR STT 2002 18.31257 -64.86058 7.0000 529.220716 1.229097 2011
TCRMP Magens Bay MGN STT 2002 18.37425 -64.93438 7.0000 157.792267 1.732995 2011
CSUN West Little Lameshur WLLB STJ 1992 18.31726 -64.72780 7.0000 21.420965 NA NA
VINPS VIIS-Newfound VIIS_NF STJ 1999 18.34866 -64.66778 7.9248 122.916575 1.521400 2016
TCRMP Botany Bay BTY STT 2002 18.35738 -65.03442 8.0000 211.805356 1.341732 2011
TCRMP Sprat Hole SPH STX 2002 17.73400 -64.89540 8.0000 584.285384 2.377433 2011
VINPS VIIS-Haulover VIIS_HA STJ 2003 18.35126 -64.67950 8.2296 87.703086 1.658000 2015
TCRMP Black Point BPT STT 2003 18.34450 -64.98595 9.0000 77.608439 1.385281 2011
TCRMP Coral Bay CRB STJ 2011 18.33797 -64.70402 9.0000 307.107221 1.426478 2011
TCRMP Savana SVN STT 2003 18.34064 -65.08205 9.0000 3645.055599 1.348563 2011
CSUN Yawzi YZ STJ 1987 18.31507 -64.72551 9.0000 50.192069 NA NA
CSUN Cabritte Horn CH STJ 1992 18.30714 -64.72164 9.0000 33.063510 1.221674 2014
CSUN East Tektite ETK STJ 1992 18.31096 -64.72182 9.0000 8.835786 NA NA
CSUN Europa Bay EUR STJ 1992 18.31674 -64.72999 9.0000 90.254080 1.158487 2014
CSUN Neptunes Table NPT STJ 1992 18.31255 -64.72301 9.0000 40.655130 NA NA
CSUN White Point WP STJ 1992 18.31445 -64.73131 9.0000 47.697333 NA NA
VINPS BUIS-Western Spur and Groove BUIS_WSG STX 2000 17.79941 -64.63618 9.4488 4234.306588 1.199000 2007
TCRMP Cane Bay CBS STX 2002 17.77388 -64.81350 10.0000 254.920163 1.865841 2011
TCRMP Eagle Ray EGR STX 2002 17.76150 -64.69880 10.0000 817.330706 1.230098 2011
TCRMP Salt River West SRW STX 2002 17.78530 -64.75940 11.0000 501.441926 1.286167 2011
VINPS VIIS-Yawzi VIIS_YZ STJ 1999 18.31387 -64.72586 11.2776 174.884932 1.587100 2015
TCRMP Flat Cay FLC STT 2003 18.31822 -64.99104 12.0000 2058.986891 1.445378 2011
VINPS SARI-Salt River SARI STX 2012 17.78522 -64.75943 12.0000 491.611818 1.720700 2012
VINPS BUIS-South Fore Reef BUIS_SFR STX 2002 17.78455 -64.60935 12.4968 2616.878649 1.560300 2015
VINPS VIIS-Mennebeck VIIS_MB STJ 2000 18.35354 -64.68437 13.7160 65.925772 1.752000 2015
TCRMP Buck Island STT BIT STT 2005 18.27883 -64.89833 14.0000 3347.115675 1.347403 2011
TCRMP Jacks Bay JKB STX 2002 17.74337 -64.57160 14.0000 547.045582 1.251076 2011
CSUN Tektite TK STJ 1987 18.30997 -64.72322 14.0000 182.763230 NA NA
TCRMP Buck Island STX BIX STX 2002 17.78500 -64.60917 15.0000 2668.461177 1.423978 2011
TCRMP St James SSJ STT 2005 18.29459 -64.83238 15.0000 509.192822 1.368424 2011
TCRMP Kings Corner KGC STX 2007 17.69116 -64.90008 17.0000 521.236721 1.730322 2011
VINPS VIIS-Tektite VIIS_TK STJ 2005 18.30934 -64.72266 17.6784 103.148213 1.833700 2015
TCRMP Seahorse Cottage Shoal SHR STT 2003 18.29467 -64.86750 20.0000 1227.479938 1.179963 2011
TCRMP South Water SWT STT 2005 18.28068 -64.94592 20.0000 3025.443889 1.331488 2011
TCRMP South Capella SCP STT 2003 18.26267 -64.87237 21.0000 4449.118000 1.436247 2011
TCRMP Mutton Snapper FSA MTS STX 2003 17.63660 -64.86240 24.0000 5379.593965 1.499484 2011
TCRMP Lang Bank EEMP LBP STX 2009 17.72145 -64.54706 27.0000 3983.349071 1.176658 2011
TCRMP College Shoal East CSE STT 2003 18.18568 -65.07677 30.0000 18002.500610 1.553173 2011
TCRMP Meri Shoal MSR STJ 2005 18.24447 -64.75862 30.0000 7360.505507 1.270001 2011
TCRMP Salt River Deep SRD STX 2009 17.78523 -64.75917 30.0000 503.543898 1.742353 2011
TCRMP Buck Island STX Deep BID STX 2017 17.80659 -64.59935 33.0000 5216.133705 NA NA
TCRMP Lang Bank Red Hind FSA LBH STX 2002 17.82427 -64.44963 33.0000 14417.039830 1.342139 2011
TCRMP Cane Bay Deep CBD STX 2009 17.77661 -64.81522 38.0000 607.109376 1.442066 2011
TCRMP Grammanik Tiger FSA GKT STT 2003 18.18885 -64.95659 38.0000 12984.840160 2.618030 2011
TCRMP Hind Bank East FSA HBE STT 2003 18.20217 -65.00158 41.0000 12416.806120 NA NA
TCRMP Ginsburg Fringe GBF STT 2011 18.18770 -64.95998 63.0000 13114.113420 1.138706 2011

For column definitions, see the list of study sites.

Summary statistics and description

What happens here: we compute the mean, median, and interquartile depth across all sites, identify the shallowest and deepest sites, then assemble a small display table.

Site depths ranged from 4 m (Great Pond) to 63 m (Ginsburg Fringe). Table 2 reports the central tendency and spread of site depth, and Figure 1 shows how the sites distribute across the depth range.

Show code
knitr::kable(summary_table, format = "markdown")
Sec 4.2 Table 2: Descriptive statistics of study-site depth, in meters.
Statistics Value
Mean depth 16
Median depth 12
25th Percentile 9
75th Percentile 20
Show code
par(mar = c(5, 4, 2, 0))

hist(
  sitedat$depth,
  breaks = 10,
  xlab = "depth (m)",
  ylab = "number of sites",
  main = NULL
)
Sec 4.2 Figure 1: Distribution of study-site depths, binned across all sites.

Downloads

The per-site depth product and its metadata are available below.

version 1.0.0 • in-review • data ≤ 2023-12-31