Coastal Management

Coastal Management Cluster Session

Below are notes taken from the Coastal Management Cluster presentations at the 16th Federation Meeting, Jan. 4-6, 2006.

NASA Applied Sciences: Coastal Management -- Lawrence Friedl

Coastal Management:

• Goal: enable partner's beneficial use of NASA Earth science results to
  • Enhance DSS capability
  • Expand and sustain the use of results

Functional themes in Coastal Management:

• Resource Mgmt
• Economic Trade/mgmt
• Emergency mgmt
• Health (public/environmental)
• Coastal change

--REASoN: HAB project - related to Algal blooms

--Numerous evaluations of DSTs and follow-on activities

--Depending on ROSES, may need to direct/fund more projects to jump-start efforts (no coastal related projects in June)

Future Directions:

• Strong model focus & preparation for future sensors
• Themes should remain similar, but bring in new partners
  • NOAA: Marine Fisheries, Estuaries
  • Coast Guard
  • Army Corps of Engineers

Currently:

• Evaluation reports
  • CREWS: Coral Reef Early Warning System (complete)
  • GNOME: Oil Spill modeling (complete)

Fisheries projects will be looked at for future. Lots of opportunity to use data

• Modeling in combinatino with observations helps

Gulf of Mexico alliance -- trying to get political buy-in from Governor to go to the government to address the issues

Harmful Algal Bloom Project (HAB)

• Email-based approach
• HAB Mapping System- constant supply of info.
• Provide real-time data for response
• Utilizes products from QuikScat & SeaWiFS, MODIS

HAB Monitoring

• Given 30 day mean, compared to daily images, are there any anomalies? Put in decision tree and decide what needs to be done.

Rapid Prototyping

• Quickly assess, does the data have potential, and if so, move it quickly into a larger project.

Top 5 Priorities

• Five benchmark reports by FY09
• Strong, competitive proposals & teams
  • Outreach & networking efforts to inform coastal community and solicit coastal projects
• Models & future Sensors
  • Strong model focus & preparation for future sensors
• More NASA Centers involved in Coastal Program
  • Significant involvement by >3 NASA Centers
• Activities with broad set of organizations & federal agencies
  • National impact through national/regional organizations & their constituents

Want to work with Non-Governmental organizations

Try to leverage the information other groups have

Coastal Mgmt at Stennis Space Center -- Jim Closs

Stennis has primary responsibility to support NASA and coastal organizations.

• 3 separate steps to do this:
  • Evaluation - Identify and assess partners' responsibilities, plans, DSTs
  • Verification/Validation - Assess accuracy and validity of NASA resources
  • Benchmarking - Assess the improvement to resources

Working at a local level doesn't allow for a broad impact, and since most gov't agencies already had ties to local, we moved away from directly supporting localities.

High Priority to extend this program to other NASA centers

• Primary Fed Partners: NOAA, EPA, NRL, ACE, MMS
• Other NASA Centers: GSFC, JPL
• Other NGO partners: Gulf of Mexico Alliance, Ocean Conservancy, Coastal States Org., Coastal America, Coastal Alliance, Urban Harbors Institute, Coastal Conservation Association.