(2) Pensacola Bay, Florida: An assessment of potential 

 impacts from changes in freshwater inflow on oyster 

 populations (Christensen et al. 1997). 



(3) Apalachicola Bay, Florida: An assessment of poten- 

 tial impacts from changes in freshwater inflow on 

 oyster populations, developed in cooperation with 

 Florida State University, University of South Florida, 

 and Florida A&M University (Christensen et al. 1998). 



(4) Galveston Bay, Texas: A quantitative definition of 

 Essential Fish Habitat, developed in cooperation with 

 the NOAA/NMFS Galveston Lab. (Clark et al. 1999). 



(5) Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor, Florida: An applica- 

 tion of habitat suitability values across estuarine sys- 

 tems to delineate habitat essential to sustainable fish- 

 eries, developed in cooperation with the Florida Ma- 

 rine Research Institute and the University of Miami 

 (Rubec et al. 1999). 



Products and services for the identification of Essen- 

 tial Fish Habitat (EFH). On October 11, 1996, Presi- 

 dent Clinton signed the reauthorization of the 

 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Man- 

 agement Act (NOAA 1996). Among its provisions is 

 a new requirement that all federal fisheries manage- 

 ment plans must be amended to include the descrip- 

 tion, identification, conservation, and enhancement 

 of Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). EFH is defined as 

 "waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, 

 breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity." This infor- 

 mation will be used by NOAA/NMFS, in consulta- 

 tion with other federal agencies, concerning any activ- 

 ity or proposed activity that may adversely impact 

 EFH. In order to meet the mandates of the revised 

 Magnuson Act, NOS and NMFS have developed work 

 plans to identify EFH in the Gulf of Mexico (NOAA 

 1997b), Southeast (NOAA 1997c) and Northeast 

 (NOAA 1998) regions. One of the major tasks as- 

 signed to NOS is to provide existing biological data 

 bases and maps, including the ELMR data for estua- 

 rine species, and regional data atlases for offshore 

 species. The primary tasks can be summarized as: 



(1) Conduct EFH needs assessment. 



(2) Provide digital spatial framework. 



(3) Provide biological and habitat data bases. 



(4) Accelerate development of ArcView® species map- 

 ping tool. 



Coastal Ocean Resource Assessment (CORA). Coastal 

 Ocean Resource Assessment (CORA) is a custom ex- 

 tension of ArcView® GIS software being developed 

 cooperatively by NOA A's Biogeography Program and 

 the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) 

 (ESRI 1997). CORA utilizes a Visual Basic user inter- 

 face to link the capabilities of ArcView® GIS with 

 Oracle® and Microsoft Access® DBMS software. 

 CORA enables the integration and analysis of large, 

 diverse coastal resources data sets, and the generation 

 of maps and summary reports on the distribution, 

 abundance and habitat of coastal fishes and inverte- 

 brates. 



Gulfwide Information System (GWIS). In 1997, the 

 Gulf Wide Information System (GWIS) project was 

 initiated by the U.S. Department of the Interior's 

 Minerals Management Service (MMS), in cooperation 

 with NOAA, the Gulf of Mexico states (FL, AL, MS, 

 LA, TX) and others. The objective of the GWIS project 

 is to develop an authoritative data base, as mandated 

 by the Oil Spill Pollution Act of 1990, for oil spill 

 contingency planning in the Gulf of Mexico region 

 (NOAA 1997a). NOAA's role and contribution to 

 GWIS is described above in Gulf of Mexico: Texas case 

 example (see p. 48). NOAA submitted a final report to 

 MMS in 1998 (Christensen and Monaco 1998). 



Coastal Analysis and Data Synthesis (CA&DS). 

 NOAA's National Coastal Assessment and Data Syn- 

 thesis (CA&DS) system will integrate national data 

 sets for 138 estuaries within a spatial framework with 

 analytical capabilities (Orlando 1999). The incorpora- 

 tion of ELMR data into CA&DS is described in Selec- 

 tion of estuaries (see p. 3). 



The Future 



NOAA's ELMR Program is now part of the Biogeog- 

 raphy Program within the Center for Coastal Moni- 

 toring and Assessment of the National Ocean Service. 

 The goal of the Biogeography Program is to address 

 three basic questions about estuarine and coastal spe- 

 cies and habitats: 



• What are the distribution, abundance and life 

 history characteristics of estuarine and coastal 

 marine species? 



• What is the spatial extent of various estuarine, 

 coastal and marine habitats? 



• What are the functional relationships between 

 species and their associated habitats? 



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