Current Projects
National Estuarine Research Reserve Social Science Fellowships
This fellowship program brings social science skills to the nation’s National Estuarine Research Reserves. The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides training and technical assistance consultation to fellows and participating research reserves on an as-needed basis.
NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office Support
The goal of this project is to ensure that the remote sensing needs for the Chesapeake Bay and Mid-Atlantic region are identified, gathered, communicated, and met. The project reviews regional remote-sensing product validation requirements and identifies development opportunities that integrate remote-sensing data with other data sets and decision-support tools in the Chesapeake region. (ongoing)
NOAA Regional Collaboration Support
NOAA regional collaboration is an effort to improve NOAA products, services, partnerships, and stakeholder relations. The effort is led by eight newly established regional teams and four national priority area task teams. These teams work together to represent NOAA’s regional and national capabilities. They provide the coordination necessary for NOAA to address regionally distinct priorities and its own national priorities of hazard-resilient communities, integrated ecosystem assessments, integrated water resource services, and outreach and communication. The NOAA Coastal Services Center currently has one or more members on five of the eight regional teams (Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic, Pacific, Western, and Southeast and Caribbean) and two of four priority area task teams (hazard-resilient coastal communities and outreach and communications). This includes leadership of the Pacific region, the Southeast and Caribbean region, the New England sub-region of the North Atlantic, and the hazard-resilient coastal communities priority area task teams. (ongoing)
Land Cover Mapping
Nothing provides a big picture view of land cover status better than these maps, which are developed using remote sensing technology.
The NOAA Coastal Services Center has baseline land cover data for most of the coastal zone. The goal is to update the imagery every five years
to also provide a means of detecting change or trends. The data is available free of charge from csc.noaa.gov/landcover.
Completed Projects
Beach Nourishment on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the U.S.
This project helps state and local governments along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S. make informed decisions about the nourishment of beaches by consolidating the best scientific and technical information and tools for evaluating and understanding beach nourishment into one source. This resource is a user-friendly Web site that includes relevant information and tools from the fields of coastal geology, engineering, economics, law and policy, and the biological sciences.
Benthic Habitats of New York/New Jersey Harbor
This CD-ROM and Web site provides results of an effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Center to identify and map the major habitats within New York/New Jersey Harbor using a combination of sediment profiling imagery and standard benthic community sampling.
Coastal Management Fellowship
A Coastal Management Fellow is working with the New Jersey Coastal Zone Management Program on a project entitled "Ocean Resource Management." The project is an in-depth review and assessment of the state's coastal zone management program. It also defines ocean governance as it applies specifically to New Jersey and to an implementation strategy for the approved coastal zone management program.
Coastal Water Quality
The Coastal Water Quality project investigates remote sensing and modeling approaches for studying oceanic and estuarine processes. During 2001 and 2002, this project focused on evaluating new airborne remote sensing methodologies for measuring water quality in shallow New Jersey bays. In 2003, the project focused on helping to make those methodologies operational for use by New Jersey coastal managers.
Impervious Surfaces
This project investigated the effects of impervious surfaces on water quality. The Center developed and evaluated a tool that derives impervious surface information from remotely sensed land cover data. The accuracy of the tool and the relationship of impervious surface cover to water quality were tested using data collected by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Conducted in cooperation with the Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program and state coastal managers in New Jersey, this project creates a model for useful, integrated water quality products.
Needs Assessment Training
Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) served as a local host for a workshop entitled “How to Conduct a Training Needs Assessment.” Participants in the two-day training included staff from NERR sites, Sea Grant, the National Estuary Program, state coastal management programs, and other local partners. The goals of the training were to familiarize participants with terminology, tools, and methods, and to help them understand how and when to use needs assessments.
Protected Areas GIS (PAGIS)
The PAGIS project brought compatible geographic information systems (GIS), geographic data management, and Internet capabilities to each of the nation’s 25 Estuarine Research Reserves and 13 Marine Sanctuaries. Through PAGIS, the reserves and sanctuaries also developed advanced data sets, underwent extensive training, and found innovative ways to make the most effective use of their new data and technological capabilities.
Regional Restoration Plan for New York/New Jersey Harbor
The Center helped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey prepare a habitat restoration plan for New York/New Jersey Harbor. This work was part of a long-term management plan being developed by the Corps and Port Authority for dredged material from the harbor. Habitat restoration is an integral part of that plan, since some forms of habitat restoration make use of dredged material, and recently enacted federal laws make it easier for the Corps to pursue habitat restoration projects not directly linked to dredging.
Southern New Jersey Land Cover Data
This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watersheds. The project relied on satellite multispectral imagery as the primary information source. These data were used to distinguish major land cover classes. For this project, the data were acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) methods.
Spatially Integrated Coastal Permitting System
The goal of this project is to develop a permit-processing system that can provide an effective, single electronic interface for government agencies to deliver customized permitting services to citizens. The system details the steps required to get a permit for a particular location and development type based on the regulatory requirements of each government agency. By simply clicking on a map or entering individual development preferences, the required steps for obtaining permits are automatically generated with the necessary data and forms. The research and development of this project can serve as a reference model for other agencies and services throughout the nation.
Topographic Change Mapping
High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) measurements of coastal beach topography were made during 2000. These measurements can be used for beach change studies and are available to the public.
