Moving towards a National Standard for Marine Habitat Classification (original) (raw)

Abstract

Recent federal initiatives have underscored the need for a national standard that provides a consistent approach for classifying coastal and marine ecosystems. To meet this need, NOAA and its partners (NatureServe, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey) have worked with individual scientists and managers from federal, state and regional agencies, academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations to develop the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS). CMECS is being considered as a national standard by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. This papers provides an overview of the structure, development and of features CMECS and summarizes completed and active pilot projects through summer 2011, with the goal of demonstrating the proposed standard’s applicability to potential users. CMECS builds on and integrates with existing classification standards. The CMECS domain extends from the coastal tidal splash zone to the deep ocean, in...

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