Vegetation Transects to Measure Effects of Snow Goose Grazing on the Colville River Delta, Alaska

This data release corresponds to visual vegetation measurements in snow goose grazing areas of the Colville River Delta. Visual vegetation measurements data include functional group percent cover and evidence of goose activity including grazed stems, snow goose grubbing holes, and shoot pulling. These data were collected at a set of four 100m transects located in areas of representative vegetation used by nesting snow geese on the Colville River Delta. The transects were distributed non-randomly in an area with sparse snow goose nesting but adjacent to an existing snow goose nesting colony in 2016, to provide baseline vegetation data that could be compared to future surveys as the snow goose nesting population grew and expanded its spatial footprint. At each transect, vegetation measurements were collected within 11 50cm by 50cm quadrats located every 10m along the transect line. At every observation, two photographs were taken at every plot. One was an overhead shot from ~1m height, and the second was a landscape shot showing the immediate vicinity of the plot. All photographs are indexed in the data table.