Atlas of the National Park Service: Ocean and Coastal Parks

Atlas of the National Park Service: Ocean and Coastal Parks

The Ocean and Coastal Resources Branch (OCRB) was established in 2007 to provide leadership and coordination in ocean, coastal, and Great Lake resource stewardship for National Park Service (NPS) units. At the time of completion, there were 88 ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes spanning across 22 states and four territories (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands). The goal of this project was to estimate and update the cumulative marine/estuarine/Great Lakes area and length of shoreline managed by the NPS using a geographic information systems (GIS) framework. Different estimates of these statistics have been published in the past and vary significantly. The inconsistencies are due to multiple factors, including the scale, methodology, accuracy and timeframe of the source data, and the specific parks included in the analysis. Several shoreline datasets were examined park-by-park to identify the ones that most accurately reflect the shoreline as depicted in recent aerial or satellite imagery. For most parks, reference imagery was obtained from the ESRI image service within ESRI’s ArcMap application. Shoreline data included several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration datasets, U.S. Geological Survey’s National Hydrography Dataset, National Park Service boundary files, and others. This project developed a shoreline dataset for ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes units and estimated statistics for the shoreline miles and marine/estuarine/Great Lakes water area managed by NPS that are more accurate than those previously published. there will never be a consistent and definitive set of statistics for shoreline miles and water area for all of the ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes parks and this is caused by many factors, including the dynamic nature of park shorelines and boundaries, and the timing and methods of data collection. Statistics for shoreline length and water area will be updated periodically as NPS boundary and shoreline datasets are updated or improved and as resources permit. Shoreline miles and water acreages were taken from: Curdts, Thom. 2011. Shoreline length and water area in the ocean, coastal and Great Lakes parks: Updated statistics for shoreline miles and water acres. Natural Resource Report NPS/WASO/NRR—2011/282, rev1a. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. The report can be downloaded at https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2180595.

Type
Project
Units
OCRB , WRD

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