Data Management Plan (Deprecated)

This data set contains sensitive biological resource data for sea turtles, northern diamondback terrapins, and other federally and/or state endangered, threatened, or rare reptiles and amphibians. Vector polygons in this data set represent federally and state protected reptile and amphibian nesting areas and distributions. Species-specific abundance, seasonality, status, life history, and source information are stored in associated data tables (described below) designed to be used in conjunction with this spatial data layer. This data set is a portion of the ESI data for North Carolina. As a whole, the ESI data characterize the marine and coastal environments and wildlife by their sensitivity to spilled oil, and include information for three main components: shoreline habitats, sensitive biological resources, and human-use resources.

This reflects the extent of all land and water features included in the overall North Carolina ESI study region. The bounding box for this particular feature class may vary depending on occurrences identified and mapped.

Process Steps:

• 2016-11-01 00:00:00 - Five species of sea turtles use North Carolina beaches for nesting during the spring and summer months. The loggerhead sea turtle (state and federally threatened) is the most numerous accounting for over 1,500 nests each year. Green sea turtles (state and federally threatened) and Kemp\x92s ridley sea turtles are far less common only averaging 5-20 nests annually. Recently both leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles (both federally and state endangered) have been documented nesting in North Carolina, although numbers remain low. Nesting locations (2006-2015) were received from the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission as point locations but were converted to polygons stretching along the beaches on which the nest was laid. Concentration values were converted to nest per square kilometer of beach (loggerheads) or the total number of nests (all other sea turtles) per beach. The high count per survey year per beach was used when calculating concentration values. High use migration, wintering, and interesting areas were mapped as polygons for loggerhead sea turtles using information from the USFWS Critical Habitat designation. Additional high use areas in the bays and estuaries were identified for juvenile sea turtles using information from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Other reptile and amphibian species were added to the atlas based on their conservation status, their dependence on the aquatic environment during sensitive life stages (breeding in particular), their rarity in the region, or based on expert input. The bulk of the data was obtained from NC NHP and from interviews with resource experts. See the Lineage section for additional information on the type of source data for this data layer. The ESI, biology, and human-use data are compiled into the standard ESI digital data format. A second set of interviews with participating resource experts are conducted to review the compiled data. If necessary, edits to the HERPS data layer are made based on the recommendations of the resource experts and digital data are created.

Data can be accessed by downloading the zipped ArcGIS geodatabase from the Download URL (see Distribution Information). Questions can be directed to the ESI Program Manager (Point Of Contact).