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. (2004-2009)
National Estuarine Research Reserve Social Science Fellowships
The NOAA Coastal Services Center and the Environmental Protection Agency have developed a coastal community planning and development training course for state and local officials. Projects and activities are designed to assist communities in their efforts to incorporate smart growth concepts into their planning and decision-making framework. The expected results include developing a community vision, assessing local regulations for their ability to incorporate smart growth principles, and developing an action plan to address obstacles and opportunities to look at alternatives for coastal development. (ongoing)
Coastal Management Fellowship
Assistance was provided to these states through the Coastal Management Fellowship program. Postgraduate students selected as fellows receive professional, on-the-job education and training, while the states receive specific technical assistance for their coastal regulatory programs. Fellows spend two years at the host agency working on substantive state-level coastal issues that pertain to federal management policies and regulations. All states with federally approved coastal zone management programs, as well as states developing such programs for approval, are eligible to submit a project proposal to receive a fellow. (2008 update)
Coastal Elevation and Mapping
The NOAA Coastal Services Center works with state and local officials to collect and distribute high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data sets. This project works with the private sector to acquire new lidar data for coastal management applications such as the analysis of storm surge and storm inundation, erosion, and water flow. The project also works with state and federal partners to share costs and find multiple uses for coastal lidar data sets. In 2008, the focus of these efforts will be in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. (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)
Great Lakes Regional Support
A partnership between the NOAA Coastal Services Center and the Great Lakes Commission was created to deploy additional NOAA services to the Great Lakes region. A needs assessment focused on coastal community development; data and information integration and distribution; and ports and navigation. The Center’s deployment of regional staff will now be coordinated with NOAA regional collaboration efforts. A work plan will be developed with the Great Lakes Commission to meet needs identified in the assessment. (2004-2009)
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
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.
Ohio Coastal Hazards GIS
The goal of this project is to demonstrate some of the potential uses of GIS for coastal management. The project focuses on the application of spatial data for hazard mitigation and response planning, and the issues examined include hazard vulnerability, coastal erosion, and shoreline management. The format is a simple Web-based tutorial that steps the user through a series of interactive maps illustrating various hazard assessment scenarios.
Precision Farming Demonstration
Under a grant from the Center, the Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve characterized soils at several farms in the watershed in order to promote adoption of precision farming and other environmentally friendly agricultural practices. This project also included efforts to stabilize streambeds.
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.
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.
Shoreline Change Detection Using High-Resolution Imagery
The NOAA Coastal Services Center supported the Ohio State University Civil Engineering project designed to validate the use of new high-resolution (1 meter to 15 meter) satellite imagery for shoreline mapping.
Topographic Change Mapping
High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) measurements of coastal beach topography were made during 1998. These measurements can be used for beach change studies and are available to the public.
