NOAA NCCOS Seafloor Mapping Priorities for the Southeast U.S. Atlantic Coast, 2020

A 2020 project by NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science aggregated priorities for seafloor mapping, sampling, and visual surveys. Twenty-five representatives from federal and state agencies, academia, and NGOs allocated virtual coins across 5 km grid cells to denote mapping needs along the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The summarized results identify common areas of interest, such as nearshore surf zones and the outer continental shelf, and are available via an online web map.

Use Cases

• Planning seafloor mapping missions based on aggregated stakeholder priorities.
• Analyzing spatial relationships between priority areas and reported data needs like sediment resources or habitat monitoring.
• Identifying regions of common interest for ecosystem management and ocean planning along the Southeast U.S. coast.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a structured process involving 25 expert representatives from multiple organizations.
• Prioritization is spatially explicit, using a 5 km x 5 km grid for the coasts of three states.
• Results are linked to a published report (Buckel et al., 2021) and an accessible online web map.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is provided in PDF format, which may limit direct machine-readability and analysis.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Summarized results from an online stakeholder prioritization exercise using a spatial framework.

Time Range

2020-02-01 to 2020-05-01

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 20:41:02.020557; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southeast United States Atlantic Coast (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) and Outer Continental Shelf