Current Projects
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)
N-SPECT Applications
The Nonpoint-Source Pollution and Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT) is a geographic information system (GIS)-based screening tool that models basic hydrologic processes, including overland flow, erosion, and nonpoint source pollution for watersheds. In 2008, assistance will be given to Puerto Rico and the states of California, Hawaii, and Texas as they use N-SPECT to estimate runoff in various land cover scenarios. Staff members also work with the Environmental Protection Agency and private-sector groups that want to use N-SPECT with their programs. (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)
Coral Reef Management Fellowship
The fellowship program provides professional on-the-job education and training to highly qualified individuals on island-level coral reef management and provides policy and management support. Fellows are placed every other year and spend two years working on specific projects and activities determined by each island's lead coral reef management agency. (ongoing)
Needs Assessment and Social Science Tools
Surveys, needs assessments, and other social science-related tools are useful in gathering information and making informed decisions. The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides coastal managers and communities with technical assistance in conducting such activities to ensure quality results and usable information. (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
Benthic Habitats of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
This CD-ROM provides a benthic habitat classification manual, geospatial data, and a benthic habitat map for the nearshore waters of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The CD-ROM was created in partnership with the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.
National Estuarine Research Reserve System Data Rescue
This project was designed to provide state coastal zone management programs with access to an integrated data-sharing system. Data formerly in a hard copy format were digitized, with priority given to those data sets in danger of immediate loss due to media deterioration. Rescued data sets are accessible through the Internet via a geographic information system, and selected data and metadata were published on a CD-ROM.
Needs Assessment for Island Coastal Programs
The Center conducted a needs assessment of each island coastal program. The goal was to collect information about the position of the coastal management program, in terms of its technical and nontechnical resources, to meet its goals. The assessment initiated the development of appropriate and feasible projects between the Center and the island coastal programs.
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.
Shoreline Data Rescue
GIS-compatible shoreline data sets that include high-resolution contemporary and historic shorelines are available from the Center’s Web site. The source of the historic shoreline data is NOAA t-sheet charts dating from the 1800s. This information is most frequently used to measure shoreline change.
Buck Island, St. Croix, Methods Development and Benthic Data
Through this project, benthic tropical ecosystem habitats around Buck Island were mapped. The Center integrated videography and single-beam acoustics into the project. The clear-water environment allowed a detailed examination of the acoustic properties of various coral, seagrass, and other tropical habitats.
Targeting Growth and Related Pollution Issues
The Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources is researching smart growth initiatives, ideas, and practices to determine their usefulness in reducing nonpoint source pollution in the Virgin Islands.
Virgin Islands Hydroseeding Demonstration Project
Under a grant from the Center, the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources purchased equipment to allow contractors and private landowners to use hydroseeding to control runoff from construction areas. The project also included an outreach program to promote understanding of the effects that runoff has on coral reefs.
