This dataset was collected by staff of the Environmental Data Center (EDC) at The University of Rhode Island in cooperation with the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network (NCBN) of the National Park Service (NPS) under the project: Field Technician Support for Elevation Mapping of NPS Salt Marshes and other sites for Sea Level RIse Planning and Post- and Future Storm Evaluation which is a modification to Task Agreement P13ACAC00891 of Cooperative Agreement P09AC00212 Elevation Mapping of Critical Park Areas for Planning and Post- and Future Storm Evaluation and Modeling. The data was collected from Summer 2014 to Fall 2016 at Assateague Island National Seashore (ASIS), Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS), and Gateway National Recreation Area-Sandy Hook Unit.

These datasets consist of point locations where vegetation surveys were conducted in salt marshes. Sample locations were determined by overlaying a 20 meter grid of points on salt marsh sites determined by the NCBN. Field crews navigated to every grid point, placed a meter square plot on the ground and sampled vegetation, identifying species type and percent cover (using the Braun-Blaunquet cover-abundance scale). At any given point/plot there may be multiple points with the same coordinates representing the different species present at that location. High accuracy elevation data was also collected at the same locations using RTK-GPS equipment. This data can be found in the same project folder on the NPS Integrated Resource Management Applications (IRMA) website.