Current Projects
Great Lakes Regional Support
The NOAA Coastal Services Center and the Great Lakes Commission have developed a work plan to address needs identified in an assessment. The emphasis areas include coastal community development, data and information integration and distribution, and ports and navigation. The plan includes developing coastal development case studies, updating the Great Lakes Information Network to include coastal management, and designing a data schema to standardize methods for collecting and sharing data. Ports and navigation issues include assessing impacts to infrastructure caused by climate change. (ongoing)
Community of Practice Support
The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides the technical and administrative expertise to get community of practice websites off the ground. A community of practice is a means by which people from various organizations—interested in the same topic and working toward similar goals—can be brought together, usually via a website. In 2008, assistance will be given for an ecosystem-based management initiative, providing technical assistance for creating ocean-economics indicators (ongoing).
Habitat Priority Planner
This GIS-based tool developed by the NOAA Coastal Services Center is for conservation and habitat restoration planners and practitioners to test different alternatives for setting management priorities in a watershed, county, or small region. The tool can be used to evaluate and compare the effects of future land use, conservation scenarios, or proposed restoration projects on habitat quality. In 2008, training and updated outreach materials are being developed to support and facilitate the use of the tool, and pilot application products are planned for Maine, New York, and South Carolina. (2003-2009)
Benthic Mapping
The Center's benthic mapping effort provides tools, technical guidance, and data to the coastal management community. A sea grass mapping project for Texas’ coastal bend and a pilot project to detect prop scars in Redfish Bay are being continued from 2007. This work is being accomplished in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and private-sector vendors. In New York, the Center provides technical assistance and support for a privately funded and directed benthic change detection project for Long Island’s South Shore. (2008 update)
C-CAP Land Cover and Change Data
The Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) is a nationally standardized database of land cover and change data within the coastal regions of the U.S. C-CAP products inventory coastal intertidal areas, wetlands, and adjacent uplands with the goal of monitoring natural and human-induced changes in these habitats on a one-to-five year cycle. Key efforts in 2008 include land cover and change maps and products developed with private-sector remote sensing contractors for the Great Lakes, Northeast, Pacific, and Caribbean Island regions. (2008 update)
Social Assessment Technical Assistance
State and local officials are getting new tools and information resources to help them address the human dimensions of coastal management. The goal is to identify human dimensions data gaps and develop social science approaches and tools to support ecosystem-based management and planning efforts. (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 worked with the New York Division of Coastal Resources and Waterfront Revitalization to conduct a project entitled “Advancing Habitat Management and Restoration Capabilities in New York State’s Coastal Area.” The goal was to develop regional standards and protocols for coastal habitat restoration and management. The project involved updating habitat information and developing regionally modified criteria for identifying, documenting, evaluating, and designating significant coastal fish and wildlife habitat areas on Long Island.
Council on the Environment Project
This project involved high school and intermediate school youth in a series of projects to protect and restore coastal areas. The project was conducted through the Training Student Organizers Program, which educates students about the environment and trains them to organize environmental improvement projects in their neighborhoods, schools, and homes. This project was funded with a special project grant from the Center.
CZMA Bibliographies
The Center's library has cataloged NOAA's Coastal Zone Information Center collection, produced by state coastal management programs under the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA). This collection contains documents that span a number of coastal topics and includes brochures, management plans, and legislative information. A bibliography of this information for the Great Lakes states is available.
Great Lakes Land Cover and Change Data
This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1995 and 2001. The project relied on satellite multispectral imagery as the primary information source. These data were used to distinguish major land cover classes, and previous images were studied to locate areas that changed over time. For this project, the data were acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) methods.
Hudson River Benthic Data
The Center funded the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Cornell University, and the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve to map submerged aquatic vegetation in the Hudson River.
Hudson River Watershed Partnership Project
This effort helps state and federal trustees integrate information about sediment chemistry, tissue chemistry, and sediment toxicity with maps that identify key habitats, potential restoration sites, and potential pollution sources. This work is part of NOAA’s effort to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other resource managers to restore natural resources damaged by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Long Island Benthic Data
The Center funded the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to map submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the south shore bays of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The SAV data will be used in conjunction with a terrestrial land cover data set being produced by the state.
Long Island Land Cover Data
This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments. 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.
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 is 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.
Remote Sensing Data Acquisition
This project provides remotely sensed coastal data products obtained through contracts with private industry. All data products meet Federal Geographic Data Committee metadata standards and are freely available to federal, state, and local coastal resource managers. To date, these funds have focused on coastal land cover development, coastal topography, and submerged aquatic vegetation.
Topographic Change Mapping
High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) measurements of coastal beach topography were made during 1998, 1999, and 2000. These measurements can be used for beach change studies and are available to the public.
