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Great Lakes Region

Michigan

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)

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)

Application of Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) Tool

The ICM Tool is a geographic information system (GIS)-based tool that, with a few basic data sets, can help inventory habitats, assess land and water habitat conditions, identify and rank potential restoration and conservation sites, and analyze “what if” scenarios for proposed changes in land cover. The tool is also capable of incorporating socioeconomic data and impervious surface analysis into the output. The Center is providing technical support to several states that are using the tool as an aide to watershed planning. (2003-2009)

Topographic Change Mapping

High-resolution topographic and bathymetric data sets are being collected to fill the need of the coastal resource management community for accurate, timely information in the coastal regions. The project acquires and distributes airborne-derived topographic and bathymetric data (including seamless topo/bathy data), derived information products, and analysis tools for constituents of the Center. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/tcm/. (ongoing)

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

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Michigan Land and Water Management Division to conduct a project entitled “Improving Coastal Wetland Resource Decisions in Michigan.” Through this project a standardized procedure was developed for making sound, consistent, and defensible decisions regarding Michigan’s coastal wetland resources. This project analyzed and integrated the assessment of biological resources and human development issues.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow is working within the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Land and Water Management Division, to create a publication entitled "Environmental Protection for Coastal Communities: A Guide for Local Governments." The project manages all phases of the guidebook, including research, development, final composition, and developing a dissemination strategy.

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.

Habitat Restoration and Conservation Plan: Lake St. Clair

This project characterizes six watersheds in Michigan and Ontario, encompassing 9,300 square miles and feeding into Lake St. Clair a region identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Canadian counterpart as priority habitat for preservation and restoration. The characterization includes a geospatial database, a decision-support tool designed to identify priority areas for conservation and restoration, and a draft conservation and restoration plan for coastal habitats. The Great Lakes Commission is developing the characterization through a cooperative agreement with the NOAA Coastal Services Center.

Mapping Impervious Surface in Grand Traverse County

Under a grant from the Center, the Michigan Department of Environmental Protection and Office of the Grand Traverse County Drain Commissioner developed a geographic information system-based method to map the extent of impervious surface in the county. This map provided a baseline for monitoring future growth and was integrated into other assessments that identified areas needing special protection.

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.