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E-Estuary: Developing a Decision Support System for Coastal Management in the Conterminous United States (IAHR)
Citation:
DETENBECK, N. E., M. C. PELLETIER, M. ABDELRHMAN, S. A. REGO, M. TENBRINK, AND J. S. LATIMER. E-Estuary: Developing a Decision Support System for Coastal Management in the Conterminous United States (IAHR). Presented at 33rd International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research Biennial Congress: Water Engineering for a Sustainable Environment, Vancouver, BC, CANADA, August 10 - 14, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of the e-Estuary decision support system to Coastal Managers, the primary audience at the Coastal Zone Management 2009 Conference (Coastal Zone 09).. e-Estuary is designed to provide a supporting information management framework for estuaries and coastal watersheds that is compatible with ongoing initiatives within the Agency and decision-support tools related to Clean Water Act applications.
Description:
Ready access to geographic information is needed to support management decisions for estuaries at local, state, regional, and national scales. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) is developing e-Estuary, a decision-support system for coastal management. E-Estuary has three elements: an estuarine geo-referenced relational database, associated watershed Geographic Information System (GIS) coverages, and tools to support decision-making. A population of 300 estuaries with associated watersheds at the HUC-10 scale (16-100 ha) or larger within the conterminous U.S. has been identified for characterization of estuarine geomorphology, tidal and hydrologic regime, and land-use/land-cover of associated watersheds. Historic estuarine water-quality data from Federal and State agencies and local estuarine management groups have been integrated within a geodatabase structure consistent with the Water Quality Exchange (WQ-X) schema established by US EPA for XML-based data transfer between reporting units and national databases. An ArcHydro-based geodatabase structure is being created to facilitate merger of national hydrographic databases (NHD-Plus) with emerging coastal data models (e.g., Analytical Framework for Coastal/Estuarine Systems), to provide linkages with web services for delivery of time series data, and to provide linkages between monitoring data and modeling applications.