The Absolute and Relative Composition of Holocene Reef Cores From the Florida Keys Reef Tract

This data release provides a summary of the absolute percent composition of all recovered material and relative percent composition of coral taxa in the Holocene-aged intervals of 61 coral-reef cores collected throughout the Florida Keys reef tract (FKRT) housed in the USGS Core Archive in St. Petersburg, FL. Estimated ages for distinct depths within each core are also provided; those ages were either measured by radiometric dating of coral samples at those depths or estimated by linear interpolation between measured ages. A complete dataset of all measured ages in the cores is available at https://doi.org/10.5066/F7NV9HJX (Toth and others, 2018). Paleodepths of the same depths in the cores were estimated by extracting the relative sea level (RSL) for each age in the cores from the model of Holocene RSL in south Florida developed by Khan and others (2017). For further information regarding data collection and analysis methods refer to Toth and others, 2019 (in preparation). This research is a part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies Project.

Khan, N.S., Ashe, E., Horton, B.P., Dutton, A., Kopp, R.E., Brocard, G., Engelhart, S.E., Hill, D.F., Peltier, W.R., Vane, C.H., and Scatena, F.N., 2017, Drivers of Holocene sea-level change in the Caribbean: Quaternary Science Reviews, v. 155, p. 13-36, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.08.032

Toth, L.T., Stathakopoulos, Anastasios, and Kuffner, I.B., 2018, Descriptive core logs, core photographs, radiocarbon ages, and accretion data from Holocene reef cores collected throughout the Florida Keys reef tract: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/F7NV9HJX.

Toth, L.T., Stathakopoulos, Anastasios, Kuffner, I.B., Ruzicka, R.R., Collela, M.A., and Shinn, E.A., 2019, The unprecedented loss of Florida's reef-building corals and the emergence of a novel coral-reef assemblage: Ecology, v. 100, no. 9, https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2781.