Expert panels convened to recommend ways to standardize, streamline coastal habitat mapping in California

SCCWRP and its partners have convened a series of expert advisory panels to develop recommendations for standardizing and streamlining how coastal habitats get mapped in California – part of an ongoing project to develop a more continuous, parsimonious process for keeping maps of coastal habitats up to date and relevant for supporting management decisions.

The four expert panels, which all held their first meetings in December, discussed priority objectives, potential cost-effective approaches, and other key technical needs to improve California’s ability to do routine, consistent, sustainable mapping of four coastal habitats: rocky intertidal areas, coastal wetlands/estuaries, eelgrass beds, and beaches and dunes. Each workgroup, which consisted of about six members, is focusing on one of these four habitats.

The maps – which document key habitat features, including boundaries, topography, and relationships to adjacent habitats – are foundational in building California’s capacity to monitor the long-term resiliency of coastal habitats to sea level rise and climate change. Because mapping is done at different times and varying frequencies, maps of California coastal habitats tend to be perpetually outdated, which can slow down progress on coastal restoration projects and impede managers’ ability to evaluate restoration success.

The panelists are expected to develop their recommendations in spring 2025.