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 to deliver 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)

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)

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)

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.

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, the University of Connecticut was awarded funding to develop an integrated educational and technical support system for local protection of high-priority Connecticut coastal habitats.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Connecticut Office of Long Island Sound Programs on a project that shared information on the restoration of degraded salt marshes with other coastal states. This sharing came in the form of a wetlands restoration database; the project also included research and monitoring activities to identify effective restoration strategies for brackish tidal marshes.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow worked with the Connecticut Office of Long Island Sound Programs on a project entitled “Long Island Sound Sediment Quality Information Database.” The fellow produced a user-friendly sediment quality information database and GIS that enhances management decisions on sediment testing plans, selection of priority pollutants for testing, and evaluation of the suitability of sediments for open-water disposal. The project made existing sediment quality and distribution information available to the public, including the academic community, in a usable format.

Coastal Management Fellowship

A Coastal Management Fellow is working with the Connecticut Office of Long Island Sound Programs on a project entitled "Public Access to Coastal Environments (PACE)." The outcome of this project will be the development of a public access database and Web site. The fellow is developing a comprehensive GIS database of shoreline property ownership classification and using it to help the state organize, analyze, and share information related to public access to coastal environments in Connecticut.

Coastal Management Outreach, Education, and Training Program

The primary objective of this project was to establish a coastal management outreach, education, and training program in Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Funding was used to develop training materials and provide workshops for Connecticut’s 36 coastal municipalities’ planning and zoning authorities and staffs. Training materials addressed such topics as coastal hazard mitigation, protective buffers and setbacks from sensitive resources, the need to increase public access to marine and tidal waters, and the reduction and control of pollution from various nonpoint sources. This project was funded by a special training grant from the Center.

Eastern Connecticut Land Cover and Change Data

This project mapped terrestrial land cover in coastal watershed environments and identified changes in these areas that occurred between 1991 and 1997. 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.

Impervious Surface Analysis Tool

The Center developed a tool to derive impervious surface information from remotely sensed data to test how impervious surfaces affect water quality. Conducted in cooperation with the University of Connecticut’s Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program and state coastal managers, this project creates a model for useful, integrated water quality products. In 2002, the Center and NEMO conducted a training session on the tool for over 30 participants from Connecticut and seven other states.