Lake Erie 2022 ESI Habitat Polygons for Oil Spill Sensitivity

GL_LAKE_ERIE_2022 ESI HABITATS Polygons is a geospatial dataset from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It contains vector polygons representing habitats and sensitive biological resources for the U.S. portion of Lake Erie, covering coastal Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The data characterize environments by their sensitivity to oil spills and include associated tables with species-specific information.

Use Cases

• Modeling oil spill impact zones based on habitat sensitivity data.
• Mapping distributions of rare, threatened, and endangered species and plants for conservation planning.
• Assessing coastal resource vulnerability by integrating habitat, biological, and human-use data layers.
• Supporting environmental response planning for the Lake Erie coastal zone.

Strengths

• Data is part of a structured Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) framework designed for oil spill response.
• Spatial coverage is explicitly defined as the U.S. portion of Lake Erie, from the Michigan/Ohio border to the New York/Canada border.
• Includes associated data tables with species-specific attributes like abundance, seasonality, and life history.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias limited to the U.S. coastal zone of Lake Erie.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Likely contains data gathered for the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) program.

Time Range

2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 22:20:13.051123; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States portion of Lake Erie, covering coastal portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.