Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS) sediment particle size in mudflat and saltmarsh habitats

The dataset details particle size of sediments across 6 intertidal sites in the winter and summer of 2013. The data provide a quantitative measure of the sediment particle size fractions present within surface sediments (up to a depth of 2 cm). Three sites were located in Essex, South East England and the other 3 in Morecambe Bay, North West England. Each site consisted of a saltmarsh habitat and adjacent mudflat habitat. 22 sampling quadrats were placed in each habitat covering 4 spatial scales. 3 replicate samples of surface sediment were collected at each quadrat. They were then processed using laser particle size analysis (detailed below) Values are expressed as different metrics of particle size and as specified size fractions as percentages of the total. This data was collected as part of Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS): NE/J015644/1. The project was funded with support from the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) programme. BESS is a six-year programme (2011-2017) funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) as part of the UK's Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) programme.,The location of the sample sites was determined by randomly allocated quadrats. Twenty two 1 x 1 m quadrats were randomly allocated to each mudflat and saltmarsh site using R (R Development Core Team, 2014) to specify four different spatial scales (A = 1 quadrat only, B = 3 quadrats at 1 m to 10 m apart, C = 6 quadrats at 10 m to 100 m apart, D = 12 quadrats at 100 m to 1000 m or site maximum). Mudflats: surface scrapes of sediment were taken. Saltmarsh: sediment was cut from 2cm below the surface. All samples were frozen at minus 20 degrees and then analysed using the Malvern Mastersizer protocol for particle size analysis, full details of which can be found here: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/facilities/laboratories/techniques/loi.html