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.

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)

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)

N-SPECT Applications

The Nonpoint-Source Pollution and Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT) is a geographic information system (GIS)-based screening tool that models basic hydrologic processes, including overland flow, erosion, and nonpoint source pollution for watersheds. In 2008, assistance will be given to Puerto Rico and the states of California, Hawaii, and Texas as they use N-SPECT to estimate runoff in various land cover scenarios. Staff members also work with the Environmental Protection Agency and private-sector groups that want to use N-SPECT with their programs. (2008 update)

Benthic Mapping

The Center's benthic mapping effort provides tools, technical guidance, and data to the coastal management community. A sea grass mapping project for Texas’ coastal bend and a pilot project to detect prop scars in Redfish Bay are being continued from 2007. This work is being accomplished in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and private-sector vendors. In New York, the Center provides technical assistance and support for a privately funded and directed benthic change detection project for Long Island’s South Shore. (2008 update)

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)

Social Assessment Technical Assistance

State and local officials are getting new tools and information resources to help them address the human dimensions of coastal management. The goal is to identify human dimensions data gaps and develop social science approaches and tools to support ecosystem-based management and planning efforts. (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)

Texas Benthic Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) Mapping

The Texas benthic mapping project is a cooperative effort to map SAV and other habitats in the Coastal Bend region. This project will be the first large-scale effort in which digital camera imagery and semi-automated image processing techniques are used. The primary application of the project is to support the newly adopted Texas Seagrass Monitoring Plan. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/benthic/funding/active.htm. (2005-2008)

Topographic Change Mapping

High-resolution topographic and bathymetric data sets are being collected to fill the need of the coastal resource management community for accurate, timely information in the coastal regions. The project acquires and distributes airborne-derived topographic and bathymetric data (including seamless topo/bathy data), derived information products, and analysis tools for constituents of the Center. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/tcm/. (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)

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)

Nonpoint Source Pollution and Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT) Applications

N-SPECT is a GIS-based tool that allows users to input various development scenarios and predict impacts to water quality. Staff is working with coastal resource managers in these states to implement this technology. Visit www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/cwq/nspect.html. (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.

Coastal Ocean Habitat Project

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

Coastal Texas Land Cover Change

This project was a collaborative effort to map terrestrial land resources in estuarine watershed environments of the Texas coast and to identify changes in these areas. The Center provided the imagery used for analysis, as well as assistance with ground verification and accuracy assessment. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has used the data for environmental assessments of several coastal residential projects and to examine human impacts on Galveston Bay. For this project, the data were acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) protocol.

Corpus Christi Bay, Benthic Habitat

This project was part of an effort to determine the distribution of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in parts of the Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program site. The project, carried out by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, incorporated historical aerial photography from the 1950s and 1970s to develop trend data. The 1994 photography was acquired according to the Center’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) methods. Extensive field observations were used to identify algal communities and also determine SAV species in selected areas.

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 Texas 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.

Maintaining Quality Standards at Coastal and Marine Managed Areas

The focus of this effort is a visitor use management handbook for managers. Originally developed for the National Park Service, this redesigned handbook provides tools for planning for and managing visitor use and visitor-related impacts on coastal and marine managed areas.

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.

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.