DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jwstqjqh8
title: Data for: Evaluating bottom-up forcing of a rocky intertidal resource harvest on a high trophic-level consumer group

description: The importance of ecosystem-based management (EBM) frameworks for resource
 harvest has increased over the past several decades as ecosystems face
 numerous anthropogenic stressors. In these frameworks, resource managers
 must consider the suite of interactions that comprise food webs and how
 resource harvest drives responses in non-target organisms. In rocky
 intertidal zones along North Atlantic coastlines, rockweed (Ascophyllum
 nodosum)—a canopy-forming brown seaweed—has been commercially harvested
 for centuries, yet most research on the effects of harvest have focused on
 the responses of the target resource and the macroinvertebrate assemblage.
 In this study, we used a Before-After Control-Impact experiment to assess
 the bottom-up effects of commercial rockweed harvest on a high
 trophic-level consumer group (birds) in Maine (USA). Overall, there was no
 evidence for strong bottom-up forcing of rockweed harvest on birds’ site
 visitation. There was a small (fewer than two birds) positive effect size
 of harvest during the one-year post-harvest recovery interval. Several of
 the trends observed for the full bird assemblage appear to be driven more
 strongly by the low tide than the high tide bird assemblage. Independent
 of treatment, site visitation by birds was low in our study (60% of
 surveys recorded no birds) and highlights questions about the use of rocky
 intertidal habitats relative to other habitat types in coastal birds’ home
 ranges. To our knowledge, there are no comparable assemblage-level bird
 studies in this system that can provide context to our results. Further
 research on coastal birds’ habitat use within home ranges and food-web
 connections with rockweed-associated macroinvertebrates is needed to more
 confidently incorporate this high trophic-level consumer group into an EBM
 framework for a rocky intertidal resource harvest.
description: # Dataset for article: Evaluating bottom-up forcing of a rocky intertidal
 resource harvest on a high trophic-level consumer group ## Dataset
 information Johnston et al. 2024. Published in Estuarine, Coastal and
 Shelf Science, Volume 298 Access this dataset on Dryad:
 . jwstqjqh8
 Recommended citation for dataset: Johnston, E. M., Klemmer, A. J., Braun,
 L. A., Mittelstaedt, H. N., Muhlin, J. F., Webber, H. M., & Olsen, B.
 J. (2024). Data from: Evaluating bottom-up forcing of a rocky intertidal
 resource harvest on a high trophic-level consumer group. Dryad Digital
 Repository. .
 jwstqjqh8 Corresponding author contact information: Name: Elliot M.
 Johnston Current Institution: Tetra Tech Location: Bangor, Maine, USA
 Current email: Funding sources:
 Maine Sea Grant, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, USDA
 National Institute of Food and Agriculture ## Dataset context This dataset
 contains three files that contain field-collected data and data analyses
 for a University of Maine research study assessing the impacts of rockweed
 (*Ascophyllum nodosum*) harvest on an intertidal bird assemblage. Dates of
 data collection: 2018-2020 Location of data collection: Maine, USA ##
 Description of the data and file structure bird_surveys.csv - bird
 point-count survey data for Before-After Control-Impact study. The file
 also contains habitat data fields used in our data analyses, such as mean
 rockweed biomass and height values at each study site.
 bird_surveys_metadata.csv - metadata for bird_surveys.csv. Explains each
 data field column. bird_analyses_code.R - R script that executes main data
 analyses. Uses bird_surveys.csv as input file. Reproduces Table 1, Figure
 5, and Figure 6. The bird data are not publicly accessible in any other
 location, and are not derived from any other published datasets. The
 rockweed habitat data included in bird_surveys.csv is derived from a prior
 study: Johnston et al. 2023. Bed-scale impact and recovery of a
 commercially important intertidal seaweed. Journal of Experimental Marine
 Biology and Ecology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jembe.2023.151869. Data for Johnston
 et al. 2023 can be found at:
 ##
 Sharing/Access information Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: CC0
 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain ## Code/Software All code was
 generated in the program R, version 4.2.0. Microsoft Excel and Microsoft
 PowerPoint were also used to create figures that appear in the published
 article.