Coastal Services Center

Current Projects

Community Resilience Coordination

Community resilience coordination entails overall resilience activities, including coordination, resilience partnership building, development and implementation of outreach and evaluation plans, and coordination of NOAA Coastal Service Center-funded resilience activities of partners. Current activities include planning and coordination of resilience panels for major conferences and partnership building with the Association of State Floodplain Managers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Nature Conservancy, and the American Meteorological Society. Activities also include the funding and coordination of partner efforts, such as the Mobile Chamber of Commerce and resilience pilot projects in Texas and Louisiana. The NOAA Coastal Services Center is helping these communities develop resilience plans and resilience indices that will allow progress to be measured over time. (2007-2009)

Gulf of Mexico Alliance Support

The Gulf of Mexico Alliance is a partnership of the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, with the goal of enhancing the environmental and economic health of the Gulf of Mexico through significant increases in regional collaboration. The five U.S. Gulf state governors released the “Governors’ Action Plan for Healthy and Resilient Coasts” in March 2006. The action plan challenges the new alliance partnership to make tangible progress over the next 36 months on targeted, regionally significant actions, setting the foundation for an effective long-term partnership that will culminate in a healthier Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and economy. (ongoing)

Gulf Coast Services Center Coordination

A full range of intensive NOAA services is needed in the Gulf Coast, hence the creation of the regional office of the NOAA Coastal Services Center, the NOAA Gulf Coast Services Center. While the office is small, staff members reach throughout NOAA and other agencies to bring to the Gulf the products and services most needed. The vision for the Gulf Coast Services Center is to provide technical expertise, financial assistance, training, and capacity building to local and state coastal resource and emergency management agencies. (ongoing)

Efforts include implementation of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance’s “Governors’ Action Plan for Healthy and Resilient Coasts,” providing support to the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System, and collaborating closely on projects with the proposed Northern Gulf of Mexico Cooperative Institute. High-priority management and administration issues for the Gulf include hazards and coastal storms, integrated ocean observing systems, mapping and change analysis, community resilience, and outreach, education, and training of coastal managers.

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)

Collaboration with NOAA Fisheries

The NOAA Coastal Services Center and NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation (OHC) partner to help coastal managers and communities implement ecosystem-based management practices for coastal habitat conservation and restoration. Technical support and seed funding may be provided to support practitioners and professionals in collaborative habitat restoration and conservation planning. In 2008, the Center and OHC are hosting a workshop on barrier removal to achieve tidal hydrology restoration in the Southeast region. It will provide an opportunity for the restoration community to share lessons learned. From this workshop, technical guidance will be developed to enhance tidal hydrology restoration. (ongoing)

Geospatial Collaboration with the National Weather Service

The NOAA Coastal Services Center partners with the National Weather Service (NWS) to improve the geospatial display and delivery of products and services related to weather, water, and climate. The focus for 2008 includes inland flood severity mapping, geospatial technical support to the National Hurricane Center, technical support to the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, techniques to serve NWS data in geographic information system (GIS) formats for easier customer access and use, and new tools and education for local emergency management personnel. The flood-severity-inundation map libraries will be implemented and available for 35 Gulf Coast regions and 17 locations in North Carolina, with additional pilot locations being developed. (2008 update)

Community Assessment and Resilience Planning

Making communities more resilient in the face of hazards is an important goal of the NOAA Coastal Services Center. Initial efforts will be focused in the Gulf of Mexico to better understand what makes communities resilient. Activities include the development of resilience measurement indicators, a community-based self-assessment and resilience planning tools, and a community of practice website for partners to exchange ideas and information. In the end, this project will not only help this region but also further efforts to identify key physical, societal, and ecological indicators of community resilience and provide case studies for future efforts. (2007-2010)

Harmful Algal Blooms

The Harmful Algal Bloom Bulletin helps coastal resource managers decide where to focus their sampling efforts and prepare for these blooms. The information is e-mailed twice a week to registered users with natural resource management responsibilities, and a public advisory is posted on the website. Activities in 2008 are focused on updating the data display system to allow visualization of satellite imagery, field observations, autonomous underwater vehicle data, and wind and current data from buoys. These data will be used to provide information on the location, extent, and potential for development, movement, or health impacts of blooms. (The Center works in partnership with many organizations to produce the bulletin.) The bulletin covers Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. (2008 update)

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)

Climate and Weather Impacts on Society and the Environment 2 (CWISE2)

Organizations involved in this four-year cooperative agreement will study the physical, socioeconomic, and ecosystem impacts of sea-level variability and change. These organizations will also develop decision-support resources to help communities from Texas to Maryland increase resilience to impacts of erosion and inundation in a scenario of sea-level change. (2007)

Climate Demonstration Projects

Two pilot coastal climatology Web sites have been developed: one for recreation and tourism (www.cormp.org/climate) and one for recreational and commercial fishing (www.coastalclimate.org). Efforts will focus on outreach for these sites, including examples explaining how the sites can be used by their respective audiences based on client needs. (2005-2007)

Digital Coast: Legislative Atlas

Users will be able to point to places on the map in the project area and find information about local, state, and federal policies, as well as legislation and jurisdictional boundaries pertinent to these locations. (ongoing)

Geospatial Support to National Weather Service (NWS)

The NOAA Coastal Services Center is providing expertise to the National Weather Service primarily in the field of geospatial technology and is helping NWS provide new products to the Center’s primary constituency, the coastal resource managers of the nation. Products and services include flood severity mapping, hurricane forecast products, decision-support tools, and general geospatial technical support to the NWS. (ongoing)

Harmful Algal Blooms

Harmful algal blooms are responsible for serious public health problems and shellfish harvesting closures in the Gulf of Mexico every year. Satellite imagery, field observations, and buoy data are used to provide information on the location, extent, and potential for bloom development or movement. The resulting Harmful Algal Bloom Bulletin helps coastal resource managers decide where to focus sampling efforts and prepare for these blooms. Public advisories are also posted in the bulletin. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/habf/. (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)

Community Resilience Indicators

Resilience is about building the capacity to bounce back. To build this capacity, it is critical to understand the physical, environmental, societal and economic factors that can best enable communities to cope with change and adapt to risks. Resilience, once defined, can be assessed and adaptive management practices applied to enhance community capacity. This project will consist of a number of related activities to develop a scientifically sound framework for resilience indicators, a methodology for community self-assessment and adaptive management, and a toolkit of information and resources for implementation. (2007)

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

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.

Brown Marsh Monitoring

The Center is overseeing the funding for the study and monitoring of brown marsh along the Louisiana coast. Louisiana recently suffered three years of severe drought, which was likely a major cause of a widespread dieback of marsh vegetation along the coast, principally in the salt marshes. Satellite imagery (LANDSAT) has identified the areas of impact and is being used for tracking recovery or additional marsh losses.

Coastal Louisiana Land Cover and Change Data

This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1990 and 1996. 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 Louisiana’s Coastal Management Division to improve and expand its current geographic information system (GIS). The goal was to identify and track coastal use permit applications and coastal habitat mitigation activities. Other parts of the project were the development of procedures to alert permit analysts to possible impacts to existing mitigation areas and an evaluation of prior habitat mitigation areas.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow is working with the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources on a project entitled "Mitigation at the Local Level – Technical Assistance to Local Government for Mitigation Program Development." The goal of this project is to develop a program that will allow for the training of local parish personnel in the state's methodology for determining impacts from permitted activities. The fellow is developing a reporting process and database for mitigation data, as well as a mitigation manual, and is providing training sessions and technical assistance to local agencies.

Coastal Ocean Habitat Project

The Coastal Ocean Habitat Project generated Center data products that utilized satellite observations of U.S. coastal waters. A retrospective satellite product for the northern Gulf of Mexico was produced during 2000.

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 State of Louisiana will be available beginning in 2003.

Harmful Algal Bloom Project

This project is developing information systems to help coastal resource managers control shellfish harvesting closures and issue public health alerts. A harmful algal bloom e-mail bulletin and a near real-time information system on the Internet are available to managers.

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.

Topo/Bathy Mapping Demonstration Project

This project uses the Grand Isle and Fourchon area in Louisiana as its subject to produce a demonstration digital topographic/bathymetric map. The Center has talked extensively with the U.S. Geological Survey about the integration of topographic and bathymetric data, and the development of digital mapping, digital data sets, and datum transformation tools has made such an effort possible.

Wetland Enhancement and Wastewater Treatment

Two major environmental problems currently affecting the Louisiana coastal zone are wetland loss and surface water pollution. Applying secondarily treated wastewater to wetlands may help address these problems. This project showcased treatment projects that use wetlands to filter wastewater effluents, and defined criteria for selecting acceptable waste and identifying suitable wetlands. Industries were given information about the economic factors that lead to cost-effective methods of waste treatment while protecting and enhancing valuable wetlands. This project was conducted by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana State University with a grant from the Center.