ASSESSMENT OF SHALLOW-WATER HABITAT MAPPING TOOLS AND METHODS
A pilot study at Fire Island National Seashore

Natural Resource Technical Report
NPS/NERO/NRTR—2010/323

EMILY J. SHUMCHENIA, JOHN W. KING

Graduate School of Oceanography
University of Rhode Island
Narragansett, RI 02882

May 2010

U.S. Department of the Interior
National Park Service
Natural Resource Program Center
Fort Collins, Colorado

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Executive summary

A pilot study to develop a protocol for habitat mapping in very shallow water (0-5 meters deep) was undertaken by a team of scientists from the University of Rhode Island, Washington College, and the National Park Service, August 13-21, 2006 in a portion of Great South Bay at the Fire Island National Seashore. The main goals of the pilot study were to test acoustic (sidescan sonar, single-beam sonar and interferometric sonar) and ground-truthing (grab samples, sediment profile imagery, underwater video) methods to map marine Park habitats in very shallow water, classify habitats using NOAA‘s Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS), and provide a general framework to the NPS managers for estimating the time and resources needed for marine habitat mapping within coastal National Parks. Despite the short-term nature of the project, the majority of methods produced detailed habitat information. We show that the technology now exists to do geological and biological habitat mapping in shallow waters, and that a simple statistical examination of the acoustic, geological and biological data allowed ecologically-relevant patterns to emerge. The current version of CMECS was limited in its ability to classify subtle but potentially important changes in habitat, but updates to this version since the study period, and future revisions, will likely address these shortcomings. A habitat mapping effort that employs multiple tools, utilizes a statistically-guided sampling approach and a classification scheme that can incorporate newly discovered ecological associations and adapt to growing datasets will be vital to the National Park Service‘s marine mapping and classification efforts.

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