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National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS)

Weekly Report – October 3, 2007

Mussel Watch Provides 22 Years of National Contaminant Trends Data to Assist Coastal Managers with Resource Decisions

The Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment Mussel Watch Project just completed its 22 nd year of monitoring environmental contaminants at 140 of the more than 300 sites across the country, culminating with the collection of the eastern Great Lakes Mussel Watch sampling sites. This was the 17 th year of Great Lakes sampling which began after the introduction of the invasive zebra mussel species to the Great Lakes in 1988. This year's contaminant data collections included extracting sediments from the Mussel Watch sites for characterization of the same suite of organic contaminants and trace elements. Additionally, this year's Great Lakes collection occurred with the collaboration of three of Mussel Watch's more than 30 coastal partners; the National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRS), at Old Woman Creek in East Huron, Ohio, the Hudson River NERR at Tivoli, New York and NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For more information contact Cliff Cosgrove at (301) 713-3028 x151 or Cliff.Cosgrove@noaa.gov or Gunnar Lauenstein at (301) 713-3028 x152 or Gunnar.Lauenstein@noaa.gov .

New Spatial Tools Available to Assist Coastal Managers with Mapping and Analysis

Four new ArcGIS tools, initially developed for ongoing National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science projects, have been made available to the geographic information system (GIS) user community through the ESRI website. These tools were originally developed for specialized tasks, but have been enhanced for wider use . Two quality assurance/quality control tools, Adjacent Features and Overlapping Features, were created for the Hawaiian Benthic Habitat Mapping project, enabling a user to quickly locate overlapping polygon and adjacent polygons sharing the same attributes. An analytical tool, the Diversity Calculator , was developed to calculate species richness, Simpson's Index of Diversity and Shannon 's Diversity Index values for the Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystem Monitoring project.  A processing tool was developed for the 2008 State of Coral Reef Ecosystems report to read in point data and create line segments with the points' attributes . For additional information, contact Ken Buja at (301) 713-3028 x140 or Ken.Buja@noaa.gov .