Data Management Plan (Deprecated)

The NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) produces national standardized land cover and change products for the coastal regions of the U.S. C-CAP products inventory coastal intertidal areas, wetlands, and adjacent uplands with the goal of monitoring changes in these habitats through time. The timeframe for this metadata is summer 2016. These maps are developed utilizing high resolution aerial imagery, along with lidar and various available ancillary information, and can be used to track changes in the landscape through time. This trend information gives important feedback to managers on the success or failure of management policies and programs and aid in developing a scientific understanding of the Earth system and its response to natural and human-induced changes. This understanding allows for the prediction of impacts due to these changes and the assessment of their cumulative effects, helping coastal resource managers make more informed regional decisions.

Process Steps:

• 2023-03-30 00:00:00 - This dataset was created by NOAA's Ocean Service, Office for Coastal Management (OCM). Classification: Initial 1m spatial resolution feature extraction for Impervious, Water, and Canopy (tree and scrub/shrub) mapping was conducted by Ecopia was developed by Ecopia using a proprietary feature recognition technology. This involves taking each image and classifying the pixels based on spectral and spatial properties, based on training examples and analyst refinement. This work was done under contract to NOAA, through NOAA’s Coastal Geospatial Services Contract (CGSC) vehicle. Impervious Surface Refinement: Commission and omission errors associated with the Impervious class were addressed through manual interpretation and clean up in ERDAS Imagine using OpenStreetMap road, building, and railroad layers as reference. Once the review and edits were complete, the refined Impervious class was incorporated back into the land cover data set. Water Refinement: Commission and omission errors associated with the Water class were addressed through manual interpretation and clean up in ERDAS Imagine. Once the review and edits were complete, the refined Water class was incorporated back into the land cover data set. Unconsolidated Shore: Unconsolidated Shore features were modeled and assessed using available Electronic Navigational Charts(ENC) data, spectral region growing, and manual interpretation. This category was typically added as part of the general water editing and refinement. Canopy Surface Refinement: Additional modeling was conducted to further refine the classification of shrub and tree height canopy features and thresholds. This modeling was based on deriving estimates of vegetation height using a surface elevation and vegetation surface information as derived through the creation and thresholding of a normalized digital surface model. Outputs from that analysis were combined with the initial canopy data. Any further commission and omission errors were addressed through manual interpretation and clean up in ERDAS Imagine. Once the review and edits were complete, the refinements were incorporated back into the land cover data set. Agriculture and Open Space Developed: Cultivated land, Pasture/Hay, and Open Space Developed features were incorporated into the grassland category of the initial land cover product through a the use of a second CNN classification, subsequent modeling (based on the presence of impervious cover and ancillary information such as the Washington state Agricultural database), and manual refinement. Wetlands: Wetlands were derived through a modeling process which used ancillary data such as Soils (SSURGO), the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) and topographic derivatives. Forest, shrub and grassland objects within the initial land cover that exhibited hydric characteristics based on the input ancillary layers were designated to their appropriate wetland category. The process relied mainly on the NWI to determine palustrine and estuarine distinctions. Grass and Bare: Grass and Bare classifications were derived using an NDVI threshold and manual interpretation by Staff and Contractors. Snow and Ice: Snow and Ice was modeled using ERDAS Imagine’s ISODATA algorithm, spectral region growing, and manual interpretation. To aid in distinguishing Snow/Ice from other spectrally similar features, the processing extent for the ISODATA algorithm was confined to areas identified by Contractors as possibly having Ice/Snow present in imagery prior to classification.
• 2023-03-30 00:00:00 - Attributes for this product are as follows: 0 Background 1 Unclassified 2 Developed Impervious 3 4 Developed Impervious under Tree Canopy 5 Developed, Open Space 6 Cultivated Crops 7 Pasture/Hay 8 Grassland/Herbaceous 9 10 11 Upland Tree (Forest) 12 Scrub/Shrub 13 Palustrine Forested Wetland 14 Palustrine Scrub/Shrub Wetland 15 Palustrine Emergent Wetland 16 Estuarine Forested Wetland 17 Estuarine Scrub/Shrub Wetland 18 Estuarine Emergent Wetland 19 Unconsolidated Shore 20 Bare Land 21 Open Water 22 Palustrine Aquatic Bed 23 Estuarine Aquatic Bed, 24 Tundra, 25 Snow/Ice