Humboldt Bay Benthic Habitats 2009 Aquatic Setting

Humboldt Bay is the largest estuary in California north of San Francisco Bay and represents a significant resource for the north coast region. Beginning in 2007 the Coastal Services Center began collaborating with the California SeaGrant program and other local partners to support an ecosystem-based management (EBM) project for Humboldt Bay. One element of this project was to develop subtidal habitat goals for the long-term management of the bay and provide a framework for conservation and management across the land-sea interface. An aerial imagery-based mapping effort was conducted between 2008 and 2010 which produced a shallow benthic habitat map classified using the Florida System for Classifying Habitats in Estuarine and Marine Environments (SCHEME) system. This effort resulted in a single polygon shapefile which was later converted to the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS)classification and organized into separate feature layers for three CMECS components; geoform, substrate, and biotic. Aquatic setting layers (#1 and #2) were produced to further populate the CMECS data structure. Ancillary data was used to accomplish this process in 2015.
Original contact information:
Contact Org: NOAA Office for Coastal Management
Phone: 843-740-1202
Email: coastal.info@noaa.gov