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EstuRe Project: U.S. Pacific Coast Estuary/Watershed Data and R Tools
Citation:
FRAZIER, M. R., D. REUSSER, H. LEE, II, L. MCCOY, C. A. BROWN, AND W. G. NELSON. EstuRe Project: U.S. Pacific Coast Estuary/Watershed Data and R Tools. Presented at 35th Annual Pacific Estuarine Researach Society Meeting, Anacortes, WA, April 12 - 14, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
The EstuRe Project is a collaborative effort of the U.S. EPA and USGS to standardize and improve the accessibility of data for U.S. Pacific Coast estuaries and their corresponding watersheds.
Description:
The EstuRe Project is a collaborative effort of the U.S. EPA and USGS to standardize and improve the accessibility of data for U.S. Pacific Coast estuaries and their corresponding watersheds. We are presenting a preview of the datasets and tools that will soon be available from the EPA website for analyzing and visualizing estuarine data. The datasets include geomorphology data for estuaries (derived from geospatial data from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s National Wetlands Inventory Project) and watersheds (based on U.S. EPA’s work to delineate watersheds for each estuary), as well as climate data from a variety of sources (PRISM, Daymet, AVHRR satellite data). Geographic coverage includes estuaries and watersheds from northern Washington (Cape Flattery, 48.383°N) to southern California (Tijuana Estuary, 32.557°N), excluding Puget Sound. We have also created tools for the statistical program R to help users extract and summarize these data and view them in Google Earth. These data can be used in many ways including: the development of regional scale benthic indicators; the identification of estuaries at risk of climate change or anthropogenic stressors; the modeling of patterns among and within estuaries of species distributions and richness; and the classification of estuaries based on geomorphology and climate. In the future, we intend to expand the project to include human population and land-use data and point-based data from projects such as EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program.