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Coastal Habitat
Coastal Habitat showcases several pilot projects developed by NCDDC in collaboration with National Marine Fisheries including GIS applications that assist with monitoring and assessment of habitats.
Habitat can simply be defined as a physical area characterized by a unique combination of physical, chemical, and biological conditions, supporting the needs of a particular organism or community of organisms. These conditions may include temperature, salinity, light, food, and protective cover, for example. Changes in any of these implies changing habitat - and consequences for the organisms that require it.
As part of a concerted effort to protect habitats in regional ecosystems, several federal and state agencies have created tools to study, monitor, and assess the health of these complex natural systems in coastal areas. NOAA's National Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC) has collaborated with National Marine Fisheries and with the National Marine Sanctuaries to develop examples of GIS applications and tools that enable scientists and resource managers to map the occurrence of commercial species and their habitat extents, and to more easily conduct monitoring and assessment of habitats.
Coastal Habitat Activities
This on-line mapping tool helps users to visualize the seasonal abundance and distribution of key fishery species and their associated inshore habitat types in the Galveston Bay.
This mapping application combines fish habitat information with marine fishery species distribution for analysis in the Gulf of Mexico.
This mapping application consists of trawl analysis data of 17 managed species from the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP).
Maps provide aspects of the Galveston Bay to assist in the assessment of coastal areas in order to grant or refuse permits. These maps delineate wetlands, submerged lands, stream segments, oyster reefs, and land use for the Galveston Bay area.
These Protected Species maps for Johnson's Seagrass and Gulf Sturgeon provide a visual representation of species distributions within critical habitat areas. The maps display the Tampa Bay wetlands area and the northern Gulf of Mexico.
This map displays data layers representing the complex habitat and bathymetry within the Montery, Gulf of Farallones, and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries and their surrounding waters.