Current Projects
Needs Assessment and Social Science Tools Coordination and Technical Assistance
Surveys, needs assessments, and other social science-related tools are useful in gathering information and making informed decisions about coastal issues. The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides coastal managers and communities with technical assistance in the use of social science tools. Projects include assessing NOAA Coastal Services Center customer needs, at a regional level, for becoming resilient to natural hazards in the Northeast, looking at the impacts of climate change on the West Coast, and meeting the needs of the Pacific Island communities. This project provides technical assistance with survey design and analysis, and for the facilitation of meetings, workshops, and stakeholder engagement in projects across the country. Products will include the development of an economics primer and other guidance documents. (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)
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)
Coastal and Marine Habitat Classification and Assessment
The Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard is an ecosystem-oriented framework for the identification, inventorying, and description of coastal and marine habitats and biodiversity. This structure provides a way to synthesize data so that habitats can be characterized and reported in a standard way, and data and information can be aggregated and evaluated across regional and national landscapes and seascapes. This effort will result in an analytical tool that provides managers with essential knowledge of habitat type and location, and access to habitat data sources. The focus for 2008 includes a habitat data inventory for the Gulf of Mexico, a seagrass status and trends report for Alabama, and additional sediment analyses data and classification within the Gulf of Mexico. (ongoing)
West Coast Ecosystem-Based Management Network
A number of programs are working to implement ecosystem-based management principles. The first steps toward this goal include identifying organizations with similar goals and issues, and identifying ways in which these organizations can work together. A pilot project along the West Coast will be used to address needs in this region and develop similar proposals for the rest of the nation’s coast. Support by the NOAA Coastal Services Center will include finding appropriate partners, helping to build a collaborative network among these participants, scoping common issues, and identifying existing tools, information, and research, including social science information, available to meet these needs. (2008-2010)
Digital Coast: Legislative Atlas
This Web-based legislative mapping tool provides coastal resource managers with easy access to coastal legislative data and information. In 2008 the Legislative Atlas team will add additional legislative information for the three regions represented in the atlas—Hawaii, California, and the Gulf of Maine. This added information includes both federal and state regulations. The legislative query tool will also be redesigned according to user input. (2008 update)
Storm and Shoreline Products for Practitioners
Resilience is about building the capacity to “bounce back.” These products enhance community resilience by providing information, resources, and tools relating to coastal storm hazards and shoreline change. Products and services include the following: a storm information Web site; easy access to hurricane evacuation studies; an expanded hurricane preparedness study for Chatham County, GA, including a decision-support tool and model for mapping storm surge zones; an information guide regarding best management practices for shoreline change; and a visualization tool for a portion of the Oregon coast that provides officials with near real-time coastal inundation. (2007-2009)
Coastal Zone Conference
The Coastal Zone conference series is largest and best-known international conference for coastal resource managers. Coastal Zone 07, to be held July 22–26, 2007, in Portland,
Oregon, will be the 15th installment of the biennial conference. Since 2000, the Center has served as the conference executive secretariat, coordinating the conference logistics,
technical program, federal sponsors committee, and local planning committee. The local planning and federal sponsors committees help in shaping overall conference themes and issue areas. (ongoing)
Coastal Storms Program Protecting Communities in the Pacific Northwest
The Coastal Storms Program, a cross-NOAA program, is developing tools and models and launching new oceanic and atmospheric observation platforms along the coastal region of the Columbia River Watershed in Oregon and Washington. The new tools and information include ecological assessments of aquatic impacts from stormwater runoff, near-shore wave models, a coastal inundation tool, a Columbia River circulation model, a new buoy, and water level gauges. Together, these tools will benefit communities and emergency managers by equipping them to better prepare for, and mitigate the effects of, coastal hazards. (2004-2007
Regional Ocean Governance Support
Regional ocean governance is a strategy for managing ocean and coastal resources in a more holistic ecosystem-based manner. Operating across local, state, and federal jurisdictional boundaries, the process is coordinated by regional ocean governing bodies, providing the framework, mechanisms, and incentives that state and federal agencies need to coordinate their management efforts. The NOAA Coastal Services Center offers support for two regional ocean governing bodies: the Northeast Regional Ocean Council and the West Coast Governor's Agreement on Ocean Health. (ongoing)
NOAA Regional Collaboration Support
NOAA is furthering its commitment to providing relevant products and services to the nation. The NOAA Coastal Services Center has one or more members
on five of the eight regional teams (Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic, Pacific, Western, and Southeast and Carribean) developed to keep attuned to customer
needs and deliver applicable NOAA products and services. The Center also serves on two of NOAA's four priority area task teams (hazard-resilient communities,
and outreach and communications). (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
Coastal Habitat Decision Tool
In 2001, the Center solicited proposals to develop decision-support tools related to coastal habitat management. As a result of this process, Ecotrust was awarded funding to develop and deploy a primary component of the Oregon Coastal Atlasdecision specific tools to facilitate both access to and use of data by local-level resource managers and scientists via the Web.
Coastal Management Fellowship
A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program to develop an estuary management information system for Oregon. The fellow developed the Dynamic Estuary Management Information System (DEMIS) using the Coos Bay estuary and watershed as a pilot area. Goals of the project were to conserve and restore estuarine habitat, mitigate for adverse estuarine effects from development, employ the best available scientific information for making coastal resource management decisions, and improve communication among local, state, and federal agencies.
Coastal Management Fellowship
A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program to create a computerized database and computerized maps of potential sites for estuarine wetland creation, restoration, and enhancement, and wetland mitigation banking. This project also benefited the Dynamic Estuary Management Information System (DEMIS) in the targeted estuaries and their watersheds, and created GIS data layers for DEMIS in each estuary.
Coastal Management Fellowship
A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program on a project entitled “Littoral Cell Management Plan.” The purpose of the fellowship was to initiate and develop littoral cell management plans for two high-need jurisdictions, the City of Bandon and an unincorporated urbanized area in Lincoln County.
Coastal Oregon Land Cover and Change Data
This project is mapping terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identifying changes in these areas. The project relies on satellite multispectral imagery as the primary information source. These data will be used to distinguish major land cover classes, and previous images will be studied to locate areas that changed over time. For this project, the data will be acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) methods.
Columbia River Estuary Land Cover and Change Data
This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1989 and 1992. 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.
Columbia River Estuary Land Cover Change CD-ROM
This land cover classification and change detection analysis for the Columbia River includes the coastal drainage area from Willapa Bay, Washington, south to Tillamook Bay, Oregon. In 1992, the Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) entered into a cooperative project with the Columbia River Estuary Study Task Force (CREST), the National Marine Fisheries Service Point Adams Field Station (Hammond, Oregon), and the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources to perform this work, which followed the C-CAP methods. CREST is a bi-state council of local governments providing coastal and estuarine planning services in the Columbia River estuary region. Members include cities, counties, and port districts in Washington and Oregon.
Needs Assessment Training
South Slough 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 Bureau of Land Management, 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.
Northwest Fisheries Science Center Collaboration
The Center is working with the National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) to develop a salmon data management system for the Pacific Northwest. The goal of this project is to provide and maintain corporate data, metadata, applications, and project management services for research scientists and external constituents.
Oregon Coastal Shorelands Access Inventory
A database inventory and geographic information system (GIS) of coastal shoreland access points was created through this project. The database and GIS products are being used as tools to improve the management of public access sites by state agencies and local governments. The comprehensive inventory is available from the Internet and includes pedestrian, vehicle, and visual access and incorporates site information on location, ownership, access type, management, facilities, landscape features, and services. This project was funded with a special project grant from the Center.
Performance Indicators Visualization and Outreach Tool (PIVOT)
The PIVOT prototype developed for Tillamook County, Oregon, supports and enhances the community accountability and reporting efforts of a local watershed sustainable management initiative. Using geographic information system (GIS) data in educational graphics and interactive maps, this Internet-based outreach tool helps bring complex sustainable management plans to life for the community. The tool is useful for clarifying issues, outlining action steps, and encouraging stakeholders to interpret the effectiveness of management decisions. The Center will continue to showcase the prototype and produce a CD-ROM that adapts the interactive Internet application to other sustainable community initiatives.
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.
Protecting Our Ports and Harbors (POPAH)
The goal of this project was to increase the resilience of ports, harbors, and their surrounding communities to earthquake and tsunami hazards in the Pacific Northwest. A demonstration project was undertaken to develop, test, and evaluate various strategies and tradeoffs to increase the resiliency of lifelines, infrastructure, and facilities in and around ports and harbors. The Center will continue developing an educationally based Internet site about tsunamis and work with local stakeholders and the Oregon Sea Grant to acquire data to be used for local risk assessments and a regional risk atlas.
Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Tools
As part of the NOAA Coastal Storms Initiative, the Center is developing risk and vulnerability assessment tools for the Florida and Pacific Northwest pilot projects. Local planners within the St. Johns River Watershed in Florida and the Columbia River Watershed in Washington and Oregon use this information to develop coastal hazard mitigation strategies. This project helps protect coastal communities from storm impacts by providing new and improved hazard and weather-related services and data.
Rocky Reef Habitat Survey
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is using multibeam sonar to map a shallow water rocky reef area off the Oregon coast to define important fish habitat. The Center is assisting the department in determining ways to best study and develop high-quality hydrographic data that will support NOAA Ocean Service nautical chart data collection programs. The final products of this project include tidal survey data sets, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) video footage, topographical model and shaded-relief bathymetry maps, and written descriptions of the habitat. These habitat maps will help Oregon public agencies better manage the state's groundfish fishery.
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. A CD-ROM, Topographic LIDAR: The Northwest Project,
discusses the management uses of these data and was released in 2001.
