Coastal Services Center

Current Projects

IOOS Applications

The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) captures and delivers ocean-related data, making more data available to a wider audience. The goal of the IOOS Applications project is to demonstrate and promote the real-world value of IOOS data and the benefits of machine-to-machine data interoperability. Four projects are underway that demonstrate IOOS applications: the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Larvae Tracker (CBOLT), the Oregon Coastal Inundation Tool, the harmful algal bloom bulletin, and the coastal climatology project. This application project will showcase these tools to show how IOOS data are being used to make a difference. (ongoing)

Climate Demonstration Project

While climate is an important factor for all coastal communities, coastal officials often don’t know where to access climate information or how to incorporate this information into their decision-making processes. Two pilot websites were developed for the Southeast to address this issue—one for recreation and tourism (www.cormp.org/climate/) and another for recreational and commercial fishing (www.coastalclimate.org). The content and utility of these sites will be reviewed in 2008, as well as the possibility of a pilot project for Pacific shellfish growers (www.nanoos-shellfish.org). (2005-2009)

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)

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)

Topographic and Bathymetric Applications

The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides information about the availability of topographic and bathymetric data sets and assists coastal managers in working with these sets—particularly in relation to storm surge and inundation modeling. The focus for 2008 is to develop a data inventory for Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia and to develop guidance documents describing the coastal management applications of topography and bathymetry. (ongoing)

Remote Sensing Training

The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides seminars and courses that demonstrate the use of remote sensing technology in a geographic information system (GIS) environment. For 2008, training will potentially be held in California, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia and may be scheduled in other states. Training leaders also will coordinate with Center partners, such as the Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) Network and the National Association of Counties, to provide remote sensing technology and tools training for their constituents. (2008 update)

Integrated Ocean Observing System Applications

The NOAA Coastal Services Center is working with data providers to ensure that ocean data is available and useful to the widest possible audience. This project involves four efforts that use ocean observing system data: the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Larvae Tracker (CBOLT), the Oregon Coastal Inundation Tool, the harmful algal bloom bulletin, and the coastal climatology project. These tools and their development will be shared with others in the hope of increasing the use of ocean data throughout the coastal zone. (2006-2008)

NOAA Fisheries' Community-Based Restoration Program and Cooperative Habitat Protection Program

The common goal of these two programs is to help practitioners and coastal managers implement ecosystem-based management practices to increase the number of habitat acres restored or conserved. The Center has particular expertise in the planning aspects. For 2007–2008, the project will involve the development of information resources and tools that improve and enhance shoreline restoration and protection in the Chesepeake Bay. (ongoing)

Regional Coastal Water Quality

Coastal water quality and nonpoint-source pollution are priority watershed issues for coastal communities. Participation from the Center’s regional staff play an important role in many of these efforts. In California, staff provides key support for the development of a statewide water quality education and technical assistance organization, the California Water and Land Use Partnership. Staff in the mid-Atlantic initiated the Chesapeake Bay Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program in partnership with the National NEMO Network and Center for Watershed Protection. In the Northeast, an assessment of the existing efforts in the Gulf of Maine watershed is being undertaken to help the organization decide how to focus its efforts more strategically. (2006-2008)

Remote Sensing Training

The goal of the “Remote Sensing for Spatial Analysts” course is to increase the usefulness of remote sensing for coastal management by demonstrating its applications in a GIS environment. The training combines basic principles with examples of coastal applications, including land cover classification, benthic habitat characterization, elevation data analysis, and water quality monitoring. In 2007 the course will be taught at several off-site facilities and a short course will be offered at the GeoTools 07 conference in Myrtle Beach, SC. A new remote sensing basics course is under development. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/rs_training.html. (ongoing)

Climate and Weather Impacts on Society and the Environment 2 (CWISE2)

Organizations involved in this four-year cooperative agreement will study the physical, socioeconomic, and ecosystem impacts of sea-level variability and change. These organizations will also develop decision-support resources to help communities from Texas to Maryland increase resilience to impacts of erosion and inundation in a scenario of sea-level change. (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 the York River, Chesapeake Bay NERR

The Center and the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Reseach Reserve (NERR) are using sediment profiling imagery, video sleds, traditional benthic sampling, and multi-beam SONAR to map turbid water habitats within the reserve. These maps will be integrated with information about key physical processes to inventory habitats and examine impacts from dredging and other anthropogenic disturbances.

Chesapeake Bay Land Cover and Change Data

This prototype project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1984 and 1988/89. 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.

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 Chesapeake Bay area will be available beginning in 2003.

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.

Topographic Change Mapping

High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) measurements of coastal beach topography were made during 1996, 1997, and 1998. These measurements can be used for beach change studies and are available to the public.

Virginia Land Cover and Change Data

The Center provided technical assistance to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which obtained funds from other NOAA sources to update previous Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) land cover change detection data for the York River area of the Chesapeake Bay. This prototype study created a third set of land cover change and trend data for one of the four previous C-CAP Chesapeake Bay Landsat scene areas.