Information Datasets - Background
The following datasets are currently available through this site. Click on the dataset name to immediately scroll down to a short description. Data dictionaries, full documentation and download access are available through the links provided within these descriptions.
Reference Tables
General reference information has been developed for each of the four major spatial aggregations now associated with the Coastal Assessment and Data Synthesis (CA&DS) (Coastal Watersheds, Hydrologic Cataloging Units, Counties, and States). The universal information that these reference files contain includes geographic unit names, standardized codes, abbreviations, and area (square miles) for each geographic unit. Portions of this information may be embedded within each of the additional datatsets distributed through the system, but no 'topic specific' information is found within these reference tables.
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below.
1) Coastal
Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
2) Whole
Watersheds (Coastal and Upstream Watersheds as one record - from CAF)
2) Hydrologic
Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey
and a building block
of NOAA’s CAF),
3) Counties,
and
4) States (aggregated
from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
This dataset is maintained by the NOAA Coastal and Ocean Resource Economics Team and is available via the Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics website (http://stics.noaa.gov).
Physical and Hydrologic (P&H)
An estuary’s physical and hydrologic characteristics help define the ecological processes and habitats that can occur within that estuary, and these same characteristics also determine how human activities affect an estuary’s overall condition. The Physical and Hydrologic Estuary Characteristics (P&H) dataset contains baseline information pertaining to estuarine and fluvial drainage areas, water surface area, freshwater inflow (USGS streamflow gages), and tidal range and tidal prism volume (NOS tide stations). Freshwater inflow estimates are provided for river long-term average flow discharging to coastal waters. Representative average tide level, prevailing tide, salinity zone areas (seawater, mixing, and tidal fresh), average tidal prism volume, and stratification characteristics are also included.
The estuary and fluvial drainage areas and the estuarine water surface areas (seawater, mixing and tidal fresh areas) were obtained from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework (CAF). An estuarine drainage area or EDA is comprised of the land and water component of a watershed that drains directly into estuarine waters. An EDA includes all or part of the USGS 8-digit cataloging unit containing the most upstream extent of tidal influence. Depending on the complexity of coastal drainage patterns, certain cataloging units were modified to eliminate the portion of the drainage area not draining directly to estuarine waters. A Fluvial Drainage Area (FDA) contains the land and freshwater portions of watersheds upstream of EDAs. FDAs coincide with USGS 8-digit cataloging units and include a majority of the Nation’s hinterland. A Coastal Drainage Area (CDA) is comprised of the land and water component of an entire watershed that: 1) drains directly to the ocean, a non-National Estuary Inventory (NEI) estuary, or the Great lakes; and 2) contains the downstream-most USGS cataloging unit that contains the head of tide. Estuarine water surface area is approximated at mean tide level. Estuarine volume of an estuary helps determine its ability to dilute pollutants. When volume is used in conjunction with freshwater inflow and the portion of total volume that is freshwater, the susceptibility of an estuary to concentrate pollutants can be assessed.
Freshwater inflow information in the P&H dataset has been obtained from USGS Gage stations data. Freshwater inflow is a major determinant of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of most estuaries. It affects the concentration and retention of pollutants, the distribution of salinity, and the stratification of fresh and salt water within an estuary. Long-term average flows are included in the P&H dataset.
Tidal differences and other constants in P&H have been obtained from tide stations long-term data. Height of tide information is obtained by means of the height differences or ratios. The mean range given is the difference in height between mean high water and mean low water. The spring range is the average semidiurnal range occurring semimonthly as a result of the Moon being new or full. It is larger than the mean range where the type of tide is either semidiurnal or mixed, and is not of practical significance where the type of tide is diurnal. Mean tide level (half-tide level) is defined as a plane midway between mean low water and mean high water.
The data are available for one distinct spatial aggregation identified below. To view the data dictionary of the dataset, click on the link below.
1) Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Agricultural Pesticides Use
Information on the use of pesticides is available for the years 1987 and 1992. The 1987 pesticide use data were provided by L. Gianessi, while the 1992 data were provided by G. Thelin.
The National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP) has compiled information about the use of pesticides in agricultural production, including statistics on 185 and 208 different chemical compounds for years 1987 and 1992, respectively. The NCFAP national database provides information from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) survey of pesticide use in field crops, vegetable crops and fruit and nut crops; selected crop reports compiled by USDA Cooperative Extension Service; pesticide benefit assessments conducted by the USDA National Agricultural Pesticide Impact Assessment Program (NAPIAP); and farmer pesticide use reports compiled in a State of California report. In addition, NCFAP conducted a survey among extension service specialists on pesticide use for areas not included in other state and federal sources.
Caveats of the data. The NCFAP database represents the average use of pesticides for an entire state and does not reflect the variability of cropping and management practices at the county level. For some states, there exist no published surveys or body of opinion by specialists in the field. In cases where state-level information was absent, the NCFAP database determined pesticide use with data from an adjacent state.
The acreage data used to calculate county-level pesticide use are based on the 1987 and 1992 Census of Agriculture. Because of Census non-disclosure rules, county-level estimates may not include all crop acreage. In addition, the data does not include pesticide applications to non-cropland areas like private residences, greenhouses, etc. Pesticides applied to pasture refer to pasture land as defined in the Census of Agriculture and does not include federally owned land.
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below. To view the data dictionary of each dataset, click on the links below.
- Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
- Hydrologic Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey and a building block of NOAA’s CAF),
- Counties, and
- States (aggregated from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Land Use / Land Cover (1990 urban enhanced)
Land Use / Land Cover (LULC) data consisting of 39 land use types falling into 10 land use classes were developed for the nation by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from the middle 1970s to the early 1980s using aerial photography and LANDSAT images. The cell resolution of the USGS LULC data was 250 by 250 meters at 1:250,000 scale. These data were improved and updated by Texas A&M University using 1990 Census information to enhance the characterization of urban areas to better reflect present conditions. Texas A&M utilized the LULC 1:250,000-scale mapping format, which has a quadrangle unit of 1 degree of latitude by 2 degrees of longitude, and performed an overlay operation with the 1990 Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) Census map in the GIS GRASS environment. The land use field type 'UA' (urban areas) from the Tiger Census map was used to overwrite the LULC data. Locations where the original land use data exist in the middle of a Census defined urban area occur because the 'UA' field from the TIGER Census files had no data for that location. In addition, the original LULC did not have data for approximately 15 quads. Subsequently, 1991 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) 1-km Land Cover Characterization Database data was used to fill in the information for these missing quads. The resultant geographic data files were then provided to the National Coastal Assessments (NCA) team of the Special Projects Office (SPO) of the National Ocean Service (NOS) in GIS GRASS format.
Upon processing the information, NCA developed areal estimates of the number of square miles of the 39 land use types and 10 land use classes within each CAF watershed, HUC, and county. From this areal information percentages were calculated as to the percent of each spatial area of interest that is comprised by a particular land use type and/or class.
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below. To view the data dictionary of each dataset, click on the links below.
1) Coastal Watersheds (from
NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
2) Hydrologic Cataloging
Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey and a
building block
of NOAA’s CAF),
3) Counties, and
4) States (aggregated
from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Population and Population Density (1970 - 2000):
The national coastal population dataset consists of population statistics developed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census with additional statistics calculated from this same source information by the Special Projects Office (SPO) of the National Ocean Service (NOS) of NOAA. The Census Bureau provided census count and current estimates of the number of inhabitants of the Nation, regions, States, cities, counties, and other areas (not including Hawaii and Alaska). The types of population statistics contained in this dataset include: population (number of persons); population change (number and percent); population density (number of persons per square mile) and density change (number and percent).
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below.
- Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
- Hydrologic Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey and a building block of NOAA’s CAF),
- Counties, and
- States (aggregated from Counties).
This dataset is maintained by the NOAA Coastal and Ocean Resource Economics Team and is available via the Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics website (http://stics.noaa.gov).
Estuarine Living Marine Resources (ELMR)
In 1985, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Estuarine Living Marine Resources (ELMR) project to develop a consistent data base on the presence, distribution, relative abundance, and life history characteristics of ecologically and economically important fishes and invertebrates in the nation's estuaries. It has been conducted jointly by NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and other agencies and institutions. The nationwide data base was completed in 1994, and includes data for 153 species found in 122 estuaries and coastal embayments in five regions. Regional revisions were completed for the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast in 1998.
The data base is divided into five study regions and contains the monthly relative abundance of each species' life stage by estuary for three salinity zones (seawater, mixing, and tidal fresh), as identified in NOAA's National Estuarine Inventory (NEI) Data Atlas-Volume I and supplement (NOAA 1985). Regional data summary reports have been published for the North Atlantic (Jury et al. 1994), Mid-Atlantic (Stone et al. 1994), Southeast (Nelson et al. 1991), Gulf of Mexico (Nelson et al. 1992), and West Coast (Monaco et al. 1990). Regional life history summary reports have been published for the West Coast (Emmett et al. 1991) and Gulf of Mexico (Pattillo et al. 1997). A National Overview report was completed in 2000 (Nelson and Monaco 2000). All reports are available for free upon request from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science's (NCCOS) Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment (CCMA).
The queriable ELMR database is available through the CCMA Biogeography
Team website:
http://ccma.nos.noaa.gov/ecosystems/estuaries/elmr.html
Shellfish Harvest Classification
The 1995 National Shellfish Growing/Harvest Areas Digital Geography is a digital spatial framework developed using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. It is derived from the 1995 National Shellfish Register and provides the details of Harvest Classification, Pollution Source Type, Restoration Activities, Classification Upgrade Potential, and Individual Species Abundance. All files obtained are geo-referenced to NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework (CAF).
The data are available for one distinct spatial aggregation as outlined below. To view the data dictionary click on the link below.
Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework)
Please refer to the full documentation prior to using these data.
Agricultural Census
The Census of Agriculture dataset provides 1978, 1982, 1987, and 1992 information on agricultural production in the United States. These files have been geo-referenced to the Coastal Assessment Framework (CAF).
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below. To view the data dictionary of each dataset, click on the links below.
- Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
- Hydrologic Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey and a building block of NOAA’s CAF),
- Counties, and
- States (aggregated from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Fertilizer Use
The Branch of Systems Analysis at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provided a dataset containing county-level nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer use for the period 1945 to 1985. The Water Resources Division at USGS provided a dataset containing county-level nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer sales for the period 1986 to 1991.
All files obtained are geo-referenced to NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework (CAF).
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below. To view the data dictionary of each dataset, click on the links below.
1) Coastal
Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
2) Hydrologic
Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey
and a building block of NOAA’s CAF),
3) Counties,
and
4) States (aggregated
from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Gulf of Maine Land-Based Sources Inventory
The Gulf of Maine Land-Based Sources Inventory is a digital database that contains
information on the location, timing, and magnitude of point and nonpoint source
discharges to the rivers, streams, lakes, and estuarine and coastal waters of the Gulf of
Maine drainage area. This site offers point and upstream source pollutant estimates for a
base period of 1991 and nonpoint source pollutant estimates for 1989-1995.
Socioeconomics
Many coastal management and policy goals focus on finding a balance between human society and the health of estuarine ecosystems. To help managers and policymakers accomplish their goals, NOAA’s Coastal Assessment and Data Synthesis Framework (CA&DS) includes socioeconomic information useful for understanding geographic patterns of human activity and their relationship to coastal environments.
The national socioeconomic data consist of three major components.
- Census 2000 information on population and housing derived from block group data,
- Regional Economic Information System (REIS) data (1969-1996 Time Series Personal Income and Earning Statistics information) derived from county-level information provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and
- Time Series Demographic Statistics (1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000) derived from Census block group data.
All files obtained are geo-referenced to NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework (CAF).
The data are available for four distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below.
- Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework),
- Hydrologic Cataloging Units (8-digit sub-watersheds from the U.S. Geological Survey and a building block of NOAA’s CAF),
- Counties, and
- States (aggregated from Counties).
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
This dataset is maintained by the NOAA Coastal and Ocean Resource Economics Team and is available via the Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics website (http://stics.noaa.gov).
Estuarine Eutrophication
This dataset provides information for assessing the scale and severity of the symptoms of eutrophication based on expert review of the 1991-1992 National Estuarine Eutrophication Survey. Estuarine eutrophication experts reviewed the results of the survey during the National Estuarine Eutrophication Assessment Workshop (August 6-7, 1998, Silver Spring, MD). The dataset also includes information about estuarine resources likely to be impacted by eutrophication, sources of nutrient inputs that could be targeted for management purposes, gaps within the dataset itself, and future outlooks.
The data are available for one distinct spatial aggregations as outlined below. To view the data dictionary of each dataset, click on the links below.
- Coastal Watersheds (from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework)
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
Pollution Sources
This dataset is derived from NOAA's National Coastal Pollutant Discharge Inventory (NCPDI), which, in turn was derived primarily from Environmental Protection Agency's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. The National Coastal Pollutant Discharge Inventory (NCPDI) is a national data base and computational framework that provides estimates of pollutant discharges from all point, nonpoint, and riverine sources into the estuarine coastal and oceanic waters of the contiguous United States. It approximates pollutant discharge conditions during the period from about 1982-1991.
The NCPDI point source and upstream source components are circa 1991 and were developed by professional staff at NOAA. Non-point urban and non-urban source components were developed through extramural contracts. The Gulf of Mexico component was developed by Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington D.C. (Circa 1987); The East and West Coast components were developed by the firm of Dalton, Dalton, Newport, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio (circa 1982 and 1984 respectively). Existing information on each source has been compiled, evaluated, and incorporated into a computational framework for estimating pollutant discharges. Major categories of pollutants included are: 1) oxygen-demanding materials; 2) particular matter; 3) nutrients; 4) heavy metals; 5) petroleum hydrocarbons; 6) pathogens; and 7) wastewater. Point sources include those facilities that discharge pollutants to surface waters through a pipe, ditch, canal, or related type of conveyance on a regular basis, and have a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued either by the EPA or a designated State agency. Nonpoint sources include discharges from urban nonpoint sources, non-urban nonpoint sources such as runoff from farmland (cropland and pasture/range) and forestland, and upstream sources discharging to coastal areas.
The NCPDI is designed to be used as a screening mechanism for assessing the relative contributions of various sources to pollutant discharges throughout the nation’s coastal zone, both under existing conditions and for a range of alternative policies that affect the amount and distribution of these discharges. The NCPDI is that intended to bridge the gap between the mountains of very detailed data available for some areas and to sparse data available for the rest of the nation’s coastal zone.
The data presented are aggregated data consisting of 4 ASCII files as described below.
The ASCII tab delimited files are:
By HUC
By WATERSHED
By COUNTY
By STATE
Supporting Files:
Us_f7.txt: Point
Source Pollutant Loading Estimates by Facility
Cdbest91.txt: Upstream Source
Pollutant Loading Estimates at Point of Entry to EDAs.
Please refer to the full documentation file prior to using these data.
