Contact: Dane Konop or FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Barb McGehan - NOAA 2/8/96
On-site in AAAS press room;
Scott Smullen - NMFS
A scientific program that measures changes to developing coastal habitat and its effects on coastal marine life will be presented by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expert Friday morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Baltimore.
"Our coasts continue to experience a high rate of growth that is changing landcover largely from vegetated to developed land," said Ford A. "Bud" Cross, director of NOAAžs National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Beaufort, N.C., and author of the paper entitled Measuring Land Cover Change in Middle Atlantic Coastal Watersheds. "We are developing a program that will not only track these changes to wetlands and coastal uplands, but relates these changes to the health of the marine life. This information can be extremely helpful to state agencies that oversee the coastal zone so they can use the information to better manage their ecosystems."
The NOAA program, called Coastal Change Analysis Program (C- CAP), combines satellite imagery, aerial photography, and field data to measure changes in emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation and coastal uplands in one to five year cycles. The system is currently being used in New York, New Jersey and North Carolina after recently assessing the Chesapeake Bay region. Cross will discuss the programžs application to the middle Atlantic region at AAAS.
C-CAP was initiated in 1990 and its primary components include development of a change detection protocol, prototype and regional projects and models linking habitat change to ecosystems. The protocol was developed with the help of more than 200 scientists and resource managers. The program will establish a national baseline model for sustainable development strategies for coastal regions.
"The focus of the coastal change analysis program is to develop an approach that would provide consistent and reliable coastal change information for U.S. scientists and managers," said Cross.