Data Management Plan (Deprecated)

These data depict areas of aquatic beds of rooted vascular plants located in coastal North Carolina. These areas primarily consist of submersed rooted vascular (SRV) plants, with some inclusion of floating rooted vascular (FRV) plants. To ensure consistency with other similar benthic datasets developed by NOAA, the original nomenclature and definitions from NOAA's Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) were crosswalked with the Florida System for Classification of Habitats in Estuarine and Marine Environments (SCHEME). The goal of this effort was to enhance the understanding of coastal photic submersed lands and how they are interconnected with wetlands, uplands, and living marine organisms.

The layers available within the data download include biotic, geoform, and substrate.

Partners: State of North Carolina

Process Steps:

• 1990-01-01 00:00:00 - Acquisition of metric aerial photography: Conventional color aerial photography was collected in several missions between 1985 and 1990 following the protocols described in NOAA Technical Report NMFS 123. Both film diapositives and paper prints were used for the interpretation.
• 1990-01-01 00:00:00 - Compilation of photographic information: Aerial photos were interpreted and habitats delineated on acetate overlays affixed to the film. Field information was used to guide this mapping process. The interpreted photo delineations were then transferred to hard-copy base maps using a zoom-transfer scope to fit the polygons to a planimetric base. Photointerpretation with a Wild AVIOPRET stereoscope. Photographs and data were compiled on a Bausch and Lomb stereo zoom transfer scope at a scale of 1:24,000 on USGS 7.5' topographic maps or on NOAA shoreline topographic sheets scaled to 1:24,000 (original scale 1:20,000). Data is a merge of several coverages dependent on map base, photo mission, and photographic scale.
• Digitization of compiled photographic interpretations: 1:24,000 scale bases were supplied to CGIA by the NOAA/NMFS/SEFSC/Beaufort Lab. These were used to digitize the delineated areas of SRV. All digital files were later compiled into one digital GIS data set. Checkplots were created for review by the Beaufort Lab and any corrections made.
• 2015-01-01 00:00:00 - The data were converted from a single ESRI polygon data set classified according to the System for Classifying Habitats in Estuarine and Marine Environments (SCHEME) to the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) 2012 format. This produced separate biotic, geoform, and substrate feature layers from the original input benthic habitat dataset. Each of the three feature layers contain respective CMECS biotic, geoform, and substrate component attributes where an "Equal" or "Nearly Equal" SCHEME value was present in the original data. Polygons for which no biotic, geoform, or substrate information was present have been removed. No other changes to the original polygon boundaries or any other alterations of the original SCHEME data were made during this process.
• 2025-08-01 00:00:00 - Standardized common design elements, cleaned up field content, repaired geometry, and projected to NAD83.