| "The very first thing we did was go out and contact all kinds of organizations and find out what kind of information they had." | |
| David Mackey , Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Office of Coastal Management |
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If you don’t know what natural resources are in a coastal region, you’ll find it difficult to manage them successfully. To make sure that local and state decision makers have the information they need to manage the Lake Erie watershed wisely, Ohio coastal resource managers led an effort to pull together, map, and provide geographically referenced information about the state’s coastal environment.
The resulting Ohio Coastal Atlas was distributed free in May 2005 to local and state decision makers. A second, expanded and refined version will be published this summer.
"We needed to identify our resources and present it in a format where you could easily digest all the information," says David Mackey, chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Office of Coastal Management. "This is an excellent vehicle for other decision makers to learn more about the resources and aid in their daily decisión making."
The 11-by-17-inch atlas includes county profiles, as well as maps and data on geology, sand resources, habitat, land use and protected areas, soils, groundwater, flood hazards, ports and transportation, and boating access.
"The very first thing we did," says Mackey, "was go out and contact all kinds of organizations and find out what kind of information they had."
Data were collected from various state agencies, federal agencies, local and county planning departments, and nonprofit organizations. In some cases, resource data were mapped for the first time.
With one staff person assigned to the project full time, it took seven-and-a-half months to collect the data, do all the mapping, put the atlas together, write and edit the text, and design the publication and get it ready to print, notes Patrick Ernst, coastal lands manager for the Office of Coastal Management.
Close to 500 copies of the 160-page atlas were printed. Coastal program staff members then met with legislators, local planning commissions, county auditors, engineering offices, and other decision makers across the state to present them with copies, explain the publication, and get feedback and additional data for a second version.
The response was tremendous, says Ernst. "With this atlas, you can look at two resources together and start seeing how the decisions you make for one affect the other." Once decision makers saw the publication, they began providing additional data they thought would be useful.
As a result, the coastal program is working on a more robust second edition, which has grown to 225 pages.
"We’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback on this atlas," Mackey notes. "It’s been a great vehicle to generate a lot of discussion and communication with all kindsof groups."
To view a portable document format (PDF) version of the Ohio Coastal Atlas, point your browser to www.ohiodnr.com/coastal/gis/. For more information on the atlas, you may contact Brian George or Brenda Culler-Gautschi at 419-626-7980 or coastal@dnr.state.oh.us
