New Hampshire / Southern Maine Ocean Uses Atlas: Dominant and Aggregates

The Ocean Uses Atlas Project is an innovative partnership between the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) and NOAA's Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM). The Project was designed to enhance ocean management through geospatial data on the full range of significant human uses of the ocean environment from the shorelines of New Hampshire and Southern Maine to the EEZ boundary. The data were gathered from regional ocean experts and users through participatory GIS methods. For more information on the project scope, background and related data products, please visit http://www.crrc.unh.edu/workshops/ocean_uses/index.html or https://coast.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/MarineCadastre/OceanUsesNewHampshireMaine/MapServer.

The New Hampshire / Southern Maine Ocean Uses Atlas Project fills a critical information gap in ocean management by providing an unprecedented, comprehensive, consistent and spatially explicit picture of human uses for management agencies, policy makers and stakeholders interested in sound and equitable ocean governance. Using participatory GIS concepts and applications, the Atlas Project generated spatial data and map products illustrating patterns, intensity, and temporal changes in a wide range of human uses in three broad categories of use: (i) fishing, (ii) non-consumptive, and (iii) industrial activities. The resulting datasets depict patterns of ocean use on a broad scale appropriate for a variety of ocean planning and management needs. Specifically, the data will be used in the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA) during the March 2010 Spill of National Significance (SONS) drill. This dataset contains all dominant use areas and sector aggregates, and is part of the larger New Hampshire / Southern Maine Ocean Uses Atlas database.

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This dataset contains dominant use areas for all uses collected in the New Hampshire / Southern Maine Ocean Uses Atlas and also aggregations by use sector. For more detailed information for each use (general use footprint, future use areas) see the sector datasets.

For more information on use definitions and types, see the readme document supplied with the data or visit http://www.crrc.unh.edu/workshops/ocean_uses/index.html.For a crosswalk of field names to use names, see the aliases in the supplied ArcMap document NHME_ocean_uses_atlas_SAMPLE.mxd

Atlas data describe broad uses of the ocean, and are not intended to be used for navigational purposes or provide information on regulations affecting human activities.

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Atlas data describe broad uses of the ocean, and are not intended to be used for navigational purposes or provide information on regulations affecting human activities.

Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 3; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.2.6.1500

Attribute accuracy was maintained by comparing data before and after each process step, and by comparing final product to source data.

Workshops were conducted at a maximum scale of 1:100,000. During post processing, original workshop polygons were aggregated to an ordered one-quarter nautical mile squared grid, so exact use locations within each block are not discernible. Data are intended to portray broad patterns for each use at a comparable scale to inform ocean management but are not intended for navigation or enforcement purposes.

Underwater cables were only mapped in the general use footprint and so are not reflected in this dataset. For the sector aggregates, dominant use areas for commercial lobster fishing (where dominant use was mapped separately for summer and winter) were combined so that it only contributed once to the sum of uses.

Logical consistency was maintained by comparing data before and after each process step, and by comparing final product to source data.