Coastal Services Center

Current Projects

Regional Coastal Water Quality

Coastal water quality and nonpoint source pollution are high-priority watershed issues for coastal communities. A needs assessment will be undertaken in the Northeast region to determine how state coastal water quality data and protocols can be better coordinated, displayed, and used for management decision-making. Regional staff members for the NOAA Coastal Services Center will identify local partners that can benefit from the training programs and tools sponsored by the Center for improving water quality. (2006-2008)

Understanding Coastal Resource Management Resilience Needs in the Northeast

Members of the coastal resource management community have begun to identify coastal hazards and prioritize their needs for improving or maintaining resilience in their communities. Armed with this information, the NOAA Coastal Services Center is inventorying and evaluating relevant management mechanisms, policies, and regulatory tools at the state and regional level to gain a better sense of how to assist these communities in their efforts. The results will be a regional approach to resilience that will resonate with the many partners engaged in this critical coastal management issue in the Northeast. (ongoing)

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)

National Estuarine Research Reserve Social Science Fellowships

The fellowship program brings social science skills to the nations National Estuarine Research Reserves. The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides training and technical assistance consultation to fellows and participating research reserves on an as-needed basis. (2006-2008)

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. (ongoing)

Habitat Priority Planner

This GIS-based tool developed by the NOAA Coastal Services Center is for conservation and habitat restoration planners and practitioners to test different alternatives for setting management priorities in a watershed, county, or small region. The tool can be used to evaluate and compare the effects of future land use, conservation scenarios, or proposed restoration projects on habitat quality. In 2008, training and updated outreach materials are being developed to support and facilitate the use of the tool, and pilot application products are planned for Maine, New York, and South Carolina. (2003-2009)

Implementing Ecosystem-Based Management in the National Estuarine Research Reserves: The Role of GIS

For this project, stakeholders in two research reserve sites, the ACE Basin in South Carolina and the Wells site in Maine, will get geographic information system (GIS) assistance as they develop strategic natural resource management plans for their geographic regions. One of the primary goals is to get the public to participate in the process. Efforts from the NOAA Coastal Services Center will focus on creative ways to highlight the value and threats to these resource areas. The Center’s Habitat Priority Planner tool will be used for this purpose. From this experience, information will be shared with other organizations on how to best use visualizations and other spatial data products to support ecosystem-based management. (2007-2009)

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)

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)

Maine Coast Protection Initiative

This coalition of more than 70 public and private organizations have come together to develop strategic goals and action plans. As a result, coastal Maine is experiencing an increased capacity to use GIS technology and data in support of proactive conservation. Moreover, the coalition has helped Maine bring a concerted focus to agreed-upon coastal priority areas, and the state is now home to a coordinated network of conservation organizations working together to protect coastal resources. (2004-2008)

Understanding Coastal Resource Management

The Center will work with other parts of NOAA to evaluate the ability of Northeast and West Coast communities to identify and address the issue of hazard resilience. By synthesizing the regional results of the Section 309 Assessments and Strategies, and evaluating relevant management and policy tools at the state and regional level, the organization will gain a better sense of how to assist the coastal resource management community in building capacity to address hazard resilience. Recommendations from this assessment will be used to plan future work in the area. (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)

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)

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.

Literature Review of the U.S. Northeast Coastal Community: Management of Coastal Ecosystems and Natural Hazards

This literature review focuses on needs in the Northeast region that are associated with ecosystem-based management and resilience to coastal hazards. The review serves as a foundational component of a greater needs assessment effort within the region. The needs assessment will confirm priority regional needs and will outline the services and types of expertise available from the Center and other NOAA programs and offices.
Northeast Literature Review (PDF)

Completed Projects

Atlantic Coast, Benthic Data

This project was initiated by the State of Maine Department of Marine Resources to assess the risk to coastal habitat from oil spills. State personnel consulted with other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) mapping experts in the region and worked with the Center’s methods to accomplish a composite data set for the entire state. Videography and single-beam acoustics have been integrated with the aerial photo analysis. The resulting data are being used by a variety of state and federal agencies, as well as commercial shellfish managers.

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 Wells and York Harbors

The Center and the Wells National Estuarine Reseach Reserve are using sediment profiling imagery and traditional benthic sampling to map turbid water habitats in the harbors. These maps will be integrated with information about key physical processes to inventory habitats and examine impacts from dredging.

Coastal Corridor GIS Mapping

Funding for this project goes toward encouraging four coastal Maine suburban communities to use smart growth principles. The project helps these communities coordinate land use, coastal resource management, and transportation planning to protect the waters of Casco Bay and area shellfish resources from nonpoint source pollution. This project is a cooperative effort among four coastal towns to use a geographic information system (GIS) as a tool to determine the most prudent way to coordinate future residential and commercial development.

Coastal Maine Land Cover and Change Data

This project studied the estuarine drainage areas of the Gulf of Maine, including the surrounding areas of Great Bay in New Hampshire and the St. Croix Estuary at the Maine/Canada border. This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1985 and 1995. 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.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to improve marine habitat protection in Maine. This was accomplished through the development of an ecological assessment methodology for the state’s intertidal and subtidal habitats, the creation of guidelines for compensation and mitigation purposes, and the establishment of procedures and formats to incorporate data and regulations into the state’s geographic information system (GIS).

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow is working with the Maine Geological Survey office on a project entitled "Creating a Sustainable Beach Community at Camp Ellis, Maine." The goals of the project are to develop beach nourishment policy recommendations for the state and to create a hazard mitigation plan. The project  also evaluates sources of sand for beach nourishment.

Community-Based Habitat Restoration

NOAA’s community-based restoration program helps community groups restore marine and estuarine habitat by providing funds and technical expertise. NOAA Fisheries leads the program. The Center has been a program partner since fiscal year 2001 and has co-funded several projects, including the Drakes Island Marsh project.

Implementing a Coordinated Approach to Growth Management for Hancock County

The purpose of this project is to build regional capacity to manage growth and development in coastal Hancock County. The project will develop this capacity by establishing and implementing a regional policy development process and a framework for growth and development. A steering committee will build stakeholder and community consensus, formulate regional policies, conduct a public participation symposium, plan implementation strategies, and document, evaluate, and analyze results.

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.

Public Issues and Conflict Management

The Maine Sea Grant College Program hosted a three-day Public Issues and Conflict Management workshop in October 2001. Aimed at Sea Grant extension agents and coastal resource managers, the workshop was designed to build skills in public issues management, including meeting management and planning, collaborative processes and decision making, and media relations.

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.

Topographic Change Mapping

High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) measurements of coastal beach topography were made during 2000.

Town of Brunswick Rural Smart Growth Strategy

This project is developing a locally-supported smart growth plan, based on regional coastal habitat priorities, that improves habitat connectivity and water quality protection, as well as helps to prioritize what open space lands are permanently protected. This project is a growth management partnership with various state and local agencies and is funded with a special project grant from the Center.

Using Remote Sensing to Address Coastal Management Issues: The Maine Project CD­ROM

This CD-ROM provides several case studies that illustrate the use of remote sensing. These efforts include restoring Atlantic salmon, employing satellite data for coastal management, using eelgrass data to improve oil spill response, analyzing land cover and habitat (Casco Bay), and characterizing wetlands. The CD-ROM also includes spatial data sets, geographic information system (GIS) tutorials, and educational information on GIS and remote sensing. For this project, spatial data were acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) methods.