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 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)

National Estuarine Research Reserve Social Science Fellowships

This fellowship program brings social science skills to the nation’s 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. (ongoing)

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. (ongoing)

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. (ongoing)

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)

Benthic Habitat Mapping and Classification

The Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) provides a consistent and universally applicable coastal habitat inventory system. This project will link CMECS to ongoing mapping efforts in an effort to evaluate its usefulness as an analytical tool in establishing a habitat baseline and monitoring ecosystem changes. Mapping projects for 2007 in Texas and Florida include developing a “crosswalk” that will demonstrate where specific habitat types would reside within the CMECS framework. Similar activities may be developed in Rhode Island and California. (ongoing)

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

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.

Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology

NOAA and the University of New Hampshire (UNH) formed the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET) to promote innovative approaches to assessing, reducing, and reversing the adverse effects of contaminants in coastal and estuarine waters. Through enhanced cooperation among academia, the private sector, and federal, state, and local governments, CICEET develops and fosters the use of innovative technologies and management approaches for the long-term conservation of coastal and estuarine ecosystems. CICEET uses the 25 sites in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System as a national network of “living laboratories” for applied research, pilot projects, and application of new technologies. The NOAA Coastal Services Center chairs the advisory board for this organization.

Dealing with Growth

For this project, the Natural Resource Outreach Coalition (NROC) is combining educational programs, technical assistance, and regional problem-solving for one region in the New Hampshire watershed to help protect its natural resources. This effort maximizes available education and technical assistance resources in the area, provides ongoing assistance to municipal officials, and encourages all 43 municipalities in the watershed to address the impacts of growth on its natural resources.

Great Bay NERR Testbed

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) has initiated activities in technology development, application, and transfer in support of the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET) and other NOAA-sponsored research and development. A technology testbed, focused on verification of new and existing technologies for estuarine contamination monitoring and remediation, enables the resource management community to make decisions and policy based on the latest and most efficient technologies. Centered at UNH, the technology transfer and testbed programs are networked throughout the National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) system.

Great Bay, New Hampshire, Land Cover and Change Data

This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1986 and 1993. 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.

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 2000. These measurements can be used for beach change studies and are available to the public

University of New Hampshire Capability Assessment and Commercialization Plan

For this project, the Center worked with the University of New Hampshire to facilitate the commercialization of technology from the university’s research division. This technology would be used to help further NOAA’s coastal resource management mission. As a part of this process, a technology verification program was developed using the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve as a test site.