Development of a Northeast Regional Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard

Classifying estuarine and marine habitats was identified as a priority need for a variety of purposes in the Northeast. This project utilized the national Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) version 4.0 to classify estuarine and marine environments in the Northwest Atlantic region (Maine to Virginia). Since CMECS was released just prior to the beginning of this project, and had not been applied to this region previously, the classification effort was informed by the habitat mapping approach that The Nature Conservancy (TNC) developed for the Northwest Atlantic. Several commonalities exist between the two habitat classification schemes: each has a multi-scale hierarchical framework, relies...

Categories: Data, Project; Tags: 2011, Academics & scientific researchers, Applications and Tools, Applications and Tools, Conservation NGOs, All tags... Conservation Planning, Conservation planning, Data Acquisition and Development, Datasets/Database, Decision support, Federal resource managers, Federal resource managers, GIS users, LCC, LCC Network Science Catalog, Map, Methodology/Protocol, North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative, Policy makers & regulators, Population and Habitat Evaluation/Projection, Presentation, Project, Publication, Report, State agencies, coastal and marine spatial planners, completed, environment, environment, Fewer tags