Habitat Mapping

 

The CRC is working with the NJDEP – Office of Coastal and Land Use Planning to identify habitat preference for shellfish and rooted submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV).  Shellfish and SAV have a preferred environmental range that they inhabit, and identifying each groups’ preferred range is necessary to form a basis for the identification and delineation of their respective habitats at local and regional scales.  This study utilizes a GIS based approach that: (1) aggregates relevant environmental geospatial data, (2) interpolates through inverse distance weighting, (3) determines the zonal statistics from within known habitat areas, and (4) uses overlay analysis to apply a common scale to dissimilar inputs.  Ultimately habitat preference will be identified and ranked as to relative quality, and the information will be used to create a hierarchal habitat suitability model which will be field tested at pilot locations throughout the state.