In the Northeast United States region, efforts are underway to better organize and integrate marine ecosystem data to support ocean planning and management efforts. An important step in this process is translating existing data to a common language so that heterogeneous data can be viewed in a common framework region-wide to better facilitate decision-making.
In September 2013, the Northeast Regional Ocean Council Habitat Working Group agreed that crosswalking (i.e., translating) existing seafloor habitat data to the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)-approved United States Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) should be a priority. At that time, the work presented here was already well underway. The fact that multiple entities have recognized the need for such crosswalking efforts underscores the value of the work presented here. We hope that the results of our work provide the essential first steps towards an extensive and eventually complete crosswalking effort in the Northeast United States.
The purpose of this report is to document the process of crosswalking existing classified benthic habitat data at three scales – local, subregional and regional. In addition, we mapped the newly crosswalked data and compared the results with maps of the original classification scheme/data. From these steps we were able to demonstrate:
1. It is possible to crosswalk existing classified benthic habitat data at multiple scales to CMECS in the Northwest Atlantic (Northeast United States).
2. There are common challenges and pitfalls to crosswalking existing data regardless of scale or data type, but there are precautions as well as corrective measures that can address these challenges.
3. We were able to construct a working list of Northwest Atlantic United States CMECS Habitats that was representative of a wide range of marine environments throughout the region.
4. Inconsistencies in some of the source data/schemes caused complications in both the processes of crosswalking and mapping, suggesting that time spent conducting initial data curation or reinterpretation specifically for habitat mapping purposes could save time in crosswalking and/or mapping.
5. Some crosswalked CMECS maps did not significantly differ from original source maps whereas others did.
6. There is value in both original source scheme maps and to CMECS maps. Original maps were often “fit” or “calibrated” to the methodology or modeling conducted with the source data. CMECS maps would allow all data across the region to be represented with a common legend.
