The Long Island Sound Study (LISS) has recognized the importance of seafloor mapping products as critical tools that assist regional managers (State of Connecticut, State of New York, Connecticut and New York Sea Grant, and the U.S. Environmental Protection (USEPA) agency with their mandates to preserve and protect coastal and estuarine environments and water quality of Long Island Sound, while balancing competing human and energy needs with protection and restoration of essential ecological function and habitats.
To that end, the LISS has recently funded two projects that complement the Long Island Sound Cable Fund (LISCF) initiatives. The first project is currently underway with on-going acoustic data acquisition, the second has been reviewed and approved and is in the process of administrative implementation.
- Acoustic data acquisition for seafloor mapping in Long Island Sound
- Developing Dynamic Habitat-Based Ecological Decision Support Tools and Data to Characterize Deep-water Habitats
These projects are consistent with the LISS aim to provide information in support of the 2015 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP), specifically, they directly addresses the following elements of the Implementation Actions:
SM-1: Identify and communicate high-priority science needs relating to the understanding and attainment of management objectives and ecosystem targets, and support research programs to fulfill these needs – for the strategy (4-1a1) – Identify and support science activities needed to transparently link outcomes and objectives to strategies and actions, setting priorities based on management relevance and scientific merits;
SM2: Complete seafloor mapping conducted under the Sound Cable Fund, and use the results to guide further mapping – for the strategy (4-1b1) – to characterize, inventory, and map open and shallow water habitats to support resource management and marine spatial planning;
SM3: Identify key datasets needed to support coastal and marine spatial planning for Long Island Sound and initiate collection – for the strategy (4-1b2) – Characterize, inventory, and map human uses, both recreational and commercial, of open and shallow water habitats to support resource management and marine spatial planning; and
SM-10: Improve the use and utility of Long Island Sound data for GIS applications – for the strategy (4-1b5) – Improve regional identification, storage, and sharing of spatial and temporal data.
A summary of the LISS’s Seafloor Habitat Mapping effort can be found here:
https://longislandsoundstudy.net/research-monitoring/seafloor-mapping/