Effort launched to standardize, streamline coastal habitat mapping in California

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a one-year effort to standardize and streamline how coastal habitats get mapped in California – a traditionally time-consuming, piecemeal task that can lead to inconsistent, fragmented coastal maps.

The project, which reached consensus in October on its conceptual approach, aims 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.

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.

Researchers usually map coastal habitats either as the first step of a coastal restoration project, or periodically as part of regional or statewide efforts. 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mapping is done at different times and varying frequencies, maps of California coastal habitats tend to be perpetually outdated, which can slow down progress on coastal restoration projects and impede managers’ ability to evaluate restoration success.

For this project, researchers are working to develop a more continuous, parsimonious process for keeping maps of coastal habitats up to date and relevant for supporting management decisions.