Current Projects
Pacific Islands Ecosystem Management
In partnership with other organizations, the NOAA Pacific Services Center will provide training and technical assistance for marine protected area management planning and evaluation, a thorough socio-economic and cultural assessment of small-scale fisheries, and ways to better coordinate the efforts of the various coastal resource management programs in the region. (2008-2009)
Pacific Islands Technology Tools and Applications
The NOAA Pacific Services Center is conducting a range of activities that support the development of technology tools and applications to enhance its ability, and the ability of its partners, to effectively manage the coasts and build resilience to coastal hazards. Some of the new activities initiated during 2008 include a partnership with the NOAA National Weather Service to develop an Internet application for distributing NOAA Weather Radio alerts. This application will provide a much-needed service for the Pacific Islands region, since the NOAA Weather Radio coverage for portions of the islands is intermittent. Another activity is the development of the Guam Resource Environmental Assessment Tool (GREAT). (ongoing)
Pacific Islands – Enhancing Coastal Community Resilience
The NOAA Pacific Services Center is conducting a range of activities that support the enhancement of coastal community resilience. Some of the activities planned for 2008 include a coastal community resilience guidebook and assessment tool, as well as an assessment of existing hazard mitigation plans. The assessment will evaluate ways to incorporate more resilience-building elements into the plans, especially elements focused on the integration of community development and coastal resource management. Tsunami inundation models will also be developed for the U.S. Pacific Island territories. These areas are highly vulnerable to tsunami impacts but have never been modeled. The Pacific Services Center will also continue working with the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System Program. (2004-2009)
NOAA Resilience Portal
This Web-based portal will provide access to a basic suite of data, information, tools, products, and services available from NOAA that are needed to help communities in pilot regions understand, evaluate, and enhance community resilience to natural hazards. (2007-2009)
Pacific Services Center Partner Support
The NOAA Pacific Services Center is committed to supporting NOAA National Ocean Service partners working in the Pacific. This assistance includes damage assessments and restoration support, including two natural resource damage assessment workshops in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The Pacific Services Center also supports technical assistance needs related to contaminated sites, including cleanup evaluation and marine debris removal. A typhoon protection strategy is also being discussed. (ongoing)
Pacific Islands Technical Assistance
The NOAA Pacific Services Center provides technical assistance to the coastal resource managers in the U.S. flag Pacific Islands. This assistance includes working with geospatial technologies, raising awareness of the availability of remotely sensed data sets, providing technical training, and directing efforts to create a unified geodetic network. In 2008, efforts include working with the National Geodetic Survey to make improvements to the National Spatial Reference System in the Pacific, introducing new land cover data and related tools, and providing geographic information system (GIS) training classes when needed. (ongoing)
NOAA Pacific Region Support
The NOAA Pacific Services Center (PSC) provides leadership to the Pacific Regional Team to support the NOAA Regional Collaboration efforts. Through the team lead, Bill Thomas, PSC will serve as a primary point of contact on regional team work, as well as liaison to the Pacific Region Executive Board (PREB). The plan for the regional team includes several projects that work across NOAA line offices with a presence in the Pacific to facilitate more collaborative product and service delivery. (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)
Pacific Islands Climate Change Portal
This portal will provide climate information and climate-related resources to coastal resource managers. The content will include tools, reports, trainings, websites, data sets, educational materials, risk assessments, and climate projections. Partnering with NOAA in this endeavor are multiple groups in the Pacific, including the Pacific Region Environment Programme and the NOAA Integrated Data and Environmental Applications (IDEA) Center. This is a prototype effort initially developed for Samoa and American Samoa but with the possibility of expanding to include additional Pacific islands. This prototype could be used in other geographies as well.
Building Geospatial Capacity in the Pacific
Pacific Services Center efforts are ongoing in providing the Pacific Islands with the needed geospatial tools, data, training, and services. These efforts include developing an inventory of spatial data for the Pacific Islands region; supporting regional data development initiatives; and supporting land cover, watershed, and land-based pollution efforts. (ongoing)
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)
Hazard Assessment Tools
Local communities have requested an easy-to-use way to access hazards data, as this information is useful when issuing building permits and making zoning decisions. Site-specific tools are being developed in response to this request, as well as open-source versions of the hazards data viewer and identification tools enabling U.S. communities with hazard mitigation plans to develop similar Internet mapping applications approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Developers are also looking to expand tool functionality to address other issues besides hazards. (2004-2009)
Pacific Islands Contaminated Sites Support
A partnership between the Pacific Services Center and NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (ORR) helps Pacific Island agencies investigate, characterize, remediate, restore, and redevelop contaminated sites, including Formerly Used Defense (FUD) sites, Superfund sites, and brownfields. The partnership matches the combined technical expertise of ORR and the Pacific Services Center with local needs related to contaminated sites. (ongoing)
Pacific Islands Damage Assessment Support
Natural resource damage assessment is a process by which natural resource trustees assess damage to and plan restoration for resources injured by oil spills, vessel groundings, and hazardous substance releases. A workshop in Guam will be offered to individuals from federal, state, and territorial agencies who may be involved in this process. The workshop will focus on issues unique to the Pacific Islands. (ongoing)
Pacific Regional Geodetic Advisor Support
The Pacific Services Centers supports a variety of activities geared toward enhancing the geodetic foundation of the National Spatial Reference System in the Pacific region. This initiative primarily involves technical support and training. (ongoing)
Pacific Risk Management `Ohana (PRiMO)
The Pacific Risk Management `Ohana (PRiMO) is an interagency working group that has evolved in the Pacific Islands to further collaboration among organizations that have disaster risk management roles. The group’s focus is on building hazard resilience at the community level. The Pacific Services Center will lead efforts to assess the applicability of the Indian Ocean Coastal Community Resilience Program and the Community Resilience Index to the U.S. Pacific Islands. Efforts will also focus on initiating multiagency collaborative projects geared at enhancing hazards resilience in coastal communities throughout the Pacific Islands region. (ongoing)
Strengthening the Capacity for Marine Protected Area Management Effectiveness Evaluation in the Pacific Region
The Pacific Services Center offers technical assistance and training on management planning and management effectiveness evaluation to international governments and their nongovernmental partners. Requests have come from Indonesia, Fiji, the Bahamas, South Korea, and U.S. territories in the Pacific region. (ongoing)
U.S. Government's Contribution to the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System
Work will continue with the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop a coastal community resilience program for the Indian Ocean region, a component of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System. Products include a community resilience guidebook, a training program, and a hazard assessment Internet mapping tool. (ongoing)
Updating Nautical Charts and U.S. Coast Pilot
The Pacific Services Center is partnering with the Office of Coastal Survey to ensure that the nautical charts and U.S. Coast Pilots within the Pacific Islands are up-to-date and accurate, so that this data (e.g., current shorelines, hydrographic depths, features, and aids or dangers to navigation) can assist maritime commerce. (ongoing)
Watershed Management Technical Support
The goal of this project is to provide assistance to coastal managers and other stakeholders to enhance their local planning and management capability and effectiveness in addressing land-based pollution sources. A key element involves providing technical training and assistance and concept design development. This element will help jurisdictions acquire technical knowledge and establish a programmatic framework for addressing and controlling land-based sources of pollution using a watershed approach. (2005-2008)
NOAA Regional Collaboration Support
NOAA regional collaboration is an effort to improve NOAA products, services, partnerships, and stakeholder relations. The effort is led by eight newly established regional teams and four national priority area task teams. These teams work together to represent NOAA’s regional and national capabilities. They provide the coordination necessary for NOAA to address regionally distinct priorities and its own national priorities of hazard-resilient communities, integrated ecosystem assessments, integrated water resource services, and outreach and communication. The NOAA Coastal Services Center currently has one or more members on five of the eight regional teams (Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic, Pacific, Western, and Southeast and Caribbean) and two of four priority area task teams (hazard-resilient coastal communities and outreach and communications). This includes leadership of the Pacific region, the Southeast and Caribbean region, the New England sub-region of the North Atlantic, and the hazard-resilient coastal communities priority area task teams. (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
Addressing the Challenges and Opportunities of Climate Variability and Change for Pacific Island Communities
Funding for this project helps provide coastal managers, other governmental officials, businesses, and community leaders in U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands with access to the most recent scientific information on the consequences of climate variability and change. In addition, this project will support the dialogue necessary to more fully understand local vulnerability and develop effective adaptive strategies. This project was funded with a special project grant from the Center.
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 Pacific Islands is available.
Developing Coastal Community Awareness
The goals of this project are to develop a community-based coastal awareness project in partnership with a village and to provide guidance and technical assistance for managing its coastal resources. The project provides information technology about land-use practices that threaten the environment and strategies for protection against them so that Samoan communities can make informed land-use and management decisions. The project is implemented through workshops, technical assistance, training, provision of equipment and materials, and assistance in implementing community-based coastal projects.
Habitat Restoration Planning
American Samoa has few areas suitable for development because land slopes tend to be very steep. As a result, the relatively flat wetland areas are targets for development. The American Samoa Coastal Management Program is attempting to prevent further losses and reclaim wetland functions through an outreach program that allows villages to develop wetland policies and to actively participate in collecting the information needed to support those policies. This project had four major components: 1) restoring mangals, 2) establishing a puzzlenut and mangrove nursery, 3) establishing a gray duck preserve, and 4) managing restored mangals via a program that involves nearby villages.
Information Exchange through Partnerships
The Center is leading the effort to implement the NOAA Ocean Service Pacific Services Center (PSC) in Honolulu, Hawaii. PSC is the focal point for the deployment of resources, products, and services from NOS to the Pacific Island region. The new center works in partnership with NOAA, as well as with other federal, state, academic, private sector, and local coastal resource programs, to establish a collaborative program that addresses identified coastal and ocean information needs of island states and territories. PSC works with these partners to determine the best way to implement this collaborative effort and fund special projects that will accelerate the process.
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.
Pacific Islands GIS
The Pacific Islands GIS project is developing fully-integrated geographic information systems (GIS), spatial data management, and Internet capabilities within the Pacific Islands coastal programs. The project concentrates on data and structures necessary to support the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) and the organizations charged with carrying out CZMA. This project is assisting in functions such as coordinating GIS hardware and software purchases, providing GIS and metadata training, developing spatial data layers and associated metadata, creating and maintaining a Web site with an interactive GIS application, maintaining a list server, and providing technical support to the islands.
Pacific Islands Special Projects Program
Special Projects is a general program that provides services, such as technical assistance and funding, as defined by island needs. The goal of the program is to provide assistance to the Pacific Island coastal management community on a very broad range of issues related to coastal management. Through the Center's Broad Area Announcement, applicants can compete for project funding to meet their needs.
Pacific Islands Technical Assistantship Program
To accommodate a need expressed by Pacific Island coastal managers, the Center has designed a specialized technical assistantship program. One of the barriers to coastal management in the Pacific is that technically trained staff, especially those with geographic information system (GIS) experience, cannot be recruited or retained. The goal of the program is to place technically trained students with Pacific Island coastal programs for two years to work on coastal management activities.
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.
Safe Navigation
The Pacific Services Center, along with the NOAA Coastal Services Center, is working to assist the Pacific Island region on maritime and shipping issues of critical importance. These issues include increased vessel traffic, out-of-date nearshore data and information, the need for updated nautical charts, environmental implications from groundings, and the accuracy of geospatial positioning for the islands and their coastal environments.
