Moving towards a National Standard for Marine Habitat Classification

Recent federal initiatives have underscored the need for a national standard that provides a consistent approach for classifying coastal and marine ecosystems.  To meet this need, NOAA and its partners (NatureServe, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey) have worked with individual scientists and managers from federal, state and regional agencies, academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations to develop the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS).  CMECS is being considered as a national standard by the Federal Geographic Data Committee.  This papers provides an overview of the structure, development and of features CMECS and summarizes completed and active pilot projects through summer 2011, with the goal of demonstrating the proposed standard’s applicability to potential users. 

CMECS builds on and integrates with existing classification standards. The CMECS domain extends from the coastal tidal splash zone to the deep ocean, including all substrate and water column features of the oceans as well as the deep waters of the Great Lakes. CMECS describes the defining features of individual habitats via five components: a surface geology component, a benthic biotic component, a sub-benthic component, a geoform component, and a water column component. A comprehensive set of modifiers allows inclusion of additional information on environmental, structural, physical, chemical and biotic features. Components can be used and mapped independently or combined as needed for specific applications. CMECS is technology- and scale-neutral.  Users choose the operational scale and level of detail suited for their purposes. CMECS is intended as a dynamic content standard, allowing refinements with improvements in technology and information.

CMECS pilots have been carried out in a variety of geographies, have used several technologies and have targeted both fish management and research issues.  Information to be presented on each study includes a methods overview, a brief description of the study purpose and technology used, an overview of project outputs, and how issues identified during the pilot were used to improve the standard.