ShoreZone Imaging and Mapping: A Tool for Ecological Analysis, Oil Spill Response, and Coastal Resource Management

ShoreZone is a coastal habitat classification system in which spatially referenced aerial video and digital still imagery is collected specifically for the interpretation of geological and biological features nearshore and intertidal zone.  Approximately 112,400 km (~70,000 miles) of ShoreZone imagery exists for the northeast Pacific coastline, including the entire shoreline of Oregon (1,750 km), Washington (4,933 km), British Columbia (37,619 km), and 68,245 km (86%) of the Alaskan coastline.  The U.S. imagery can be viewed on-line at http://www.shorezone.org.  ShoreZone imagery provides a useful baseline and visual reference, and the mapped coastal attributes are an important dataset for scientists and managers providing a geo-referenced spatial framework for coastal habitat assessments on local and regional scales.  ShoreZone data has many uses including: oil spill response; marine spatial planning; fisheries management and research; mariculture site review; recreation; archaeological inventory; marine debris; search and rescue; and others. This symposium will explore what ShoreZone has to offer resource management and how to access the existing data.