MapCoast: Bringing Together Scientists, Technology, and Users

One major goal of the MapCoast partnership is to develop protocols and procedures for the synthesis and interpretation of subaqueous soils, with an objective of providing widely accessible information to a variety of users. The ultimate goal is to create a seamless soils-sediments database of our coastal waters.

The partnership has brought together a diverse group of scientists, stakeholders, and data consumers who recognize the need to collect detailed soil and sediment data for coastal ecosystems. Their work consists of:

• Gathering detailed data on water depth (bathymetry) for the coast
• Characterizing (classifying) bottom composition
• Using sonar imaging to map geological formations and submerged habitats
• Describing benthic (bottom) community composition and condition using sediment profile imagery (SPI) technology
• Mapping and characterizing subaqueous soil types

These data make it possible to integrate the information to produce underwater soil maps, benthic geological maps, and submerged habitat maps. These maps will help meet the informational needs of shellfishermen, coastal management agencies and managers, citizens, fisheries managers, scientists, and a host of other agencies, organizations, and individuals who use Rhode Island’s coastal zone.

The collaborative effort of the MapCoast Partnership brings together the diverse talents, skills, and resources of researchers to produce data sets that will address a broad spectrum of users. Physical scientists (geologists, soils experts) are working in concert with biologists and technocrats (GIS, remote sensing specialists) to produce data sets that, taken together, provide a resource inventory that is a complete and accurate description of shallow-water habitats. The partners are sharing equipment, data collection, laboratories, and sampling procedures to fine-tune the protocols that will be used by others in mapping and classifying subaqueous soils around the world.

In the end, this protocol for synthesis and interpretation allows the MapCoast data, and associated metadata (information about the data), to be available to users via a number of Internet technologies such as Internet Map Service, downloadable GIS data, imagery servers, and the MapCoast portal. For more information about MapCoast, visit www.mapcoast.org.

Rhode Island Sea Grant
University of Rhode Island
Graduate School of Oceanography
Narragansett, RI 02882

Coastal Institute
University of Rhode Island
Graduate School of Oceanography
Room 124
Narragansett, RI 02882