Underwater Temperature at Buck Island Reef National Monument Coral Reefs, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project provides science that helps resource managers tasked with the stewardship of coral reef resources. This data release provides underwater temperature data recorded every fifteen minutes since 2019 at three coral reef locations in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The sites are on the fringing reef of the National Park Service’s Buck Island Reef National Monument: Northwest Reef (NWR), Northeast Reef (NER, also known as ‘Scuba Cut’), and South Forereef (SFR) and were the subject of related studies on reefs protecting shorelines published in Kuffner and others (2022) and Toth and others (2023). Measurements were made from June 2019 to October 2024. Temperatures were recorded with Onset® HOBO® Water Temp Pro V2 (U22-001) data loggers, in duplicate, at each site. Loggers were attached to concrete blocks fixed to the reef with stainless-steel rods and epoxy at depths of 7 to 13 feet (ft) of seawater.

Kuffner, I.B., Stathakopoulos, A., Ewen, K.A., Hanna Holloway, N., Lyons, E.O., Bartlett, L.A., Pollock, C.G., and Hillis-Starr, Z., 2022, Experimental coral-growth rates and time-series imagery data for Acropora palmata and Pseudodiploria strigosa in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P94BOI9T.

Toth, L.T., Storlazzi, C.D., Kuffner, I.B., Quataert, E., Reyns, J., McCall, R., Stathakopoulos, A., Hillis-Starr, Z., Hanna Holloway, N., Ewen, K.A., Pollock, C.G., Code, T., and Aronson, R.B., 2023, The potential for coral reef restoration to mitigate coastal flooding as sea levels rise: Nature Communications, v. 14, article 2313, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37858-2.