Chesapeake Bay 2016 ESI: Political and Jurisdictional Boundaries for Oil Spill Sensitivity

Chesapeake Bay and the Outer Coasts of Maryland and Virginia are covered by this 2016 Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) dataset. It contains vector polygons, lines, and points depicting U.S. Army Corps of Engineers districts, U.S. Coast Guard districts, county boundaries, EPA regions, FEMA regions, state waters, tribal lands, and coast guard stations. The data was created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to characterize human-use resources for oil spill sensitivity assessments.

Use Cases

• Map jurisdictional overlaps for emergency response planning based on the listed agency and political boundaries.
• Analyze coastal infrastructure proximity to sensitive areas based on the locations of Coast Guard stations and district boundaries.
• Model potential oil spill impacts on tribal lands and managed areas based on the included polygon layers.

Strengths

• Data characterizes multiple human-use components for oil spill sensitivity, including political, jurisdictional, and management areas.
• Covers a specific, well-defined geographic region: Chesapeake Bay and the Outer Coasts of Maryland and Virginia.
• Includes vector data for three geometry types (polygons, lines, points) representing different feature classes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is from 2016; jurisdictional boundaries may have changed since collection.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Likely compiled from official agency sources for the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) program.

Time Range

2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:31:28.645349; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Chesapeake Bay and the Outer Coasts of Maryland and Virginia, North Atlantic Ocean, North America