resources

The St. Clair Region Conservation Authority provides leadership in southwestern Ontario through coordination of watershed planning, implementation of resource management programs, and promotion of conservation awareness in cooperation with others. Because what happens on the land is reflected in the water and ecosystems, the SCRCA develops programs that protect land resources and promotes watershed stewardship practices that lead to healthy, sustainable communities and industries.

NOAA's C-CAP Land Cover Atlas is an online, interactive map that displays regional land cover and land cover change for coastlines in the United States, including those along the Great Lakes. The map summarizes general change trends (such as forest losses or new development), highlights specific changes of interest (salt marsh losses to open water, or evergreen forest losses to development, for instance), and provides tables, maps, and reports to enhance communication and decision-making.

The Delft3D Flexible Mesh Suite (Delft3D FM) models coastal, estuarine, river, rural, and urban environments in order to support coastal and marine management. This software can simulate storm surges, hurricanes, tsunamis, detailed flows and water levels, waves, sediment transport and morphology, water quality and ecology, and is capable of handling the interactions between these processes.

The Great Lakes Ecoregional Plan identifies all native species, natural communities and aquatic systems characteristic of the Great Lakes region and outlines how many of and where these elements of biodiversity need to be protected over the long term. In addition, this plan identifies broad-scale threats to Great Lakes biodiversity and begins to develop strategies to address these threats. This plan was replaced by the Binational Great Lakes Biodiversity Conservation Strategies.

This Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands Monitoring Program involves monitoring of Great Lakes coastal wetland biota, habitat, and water quality to provide information on coastal wetland condition using fish, birds, calling amphibians, wetland vegetation, aquatic macroinvertebrates, and water quality. Limited data from this monitoring is available to anonymous users, while the remaining of the data is available to registered users. Data from this monitoring program is used to inform the IBIs in the Coastal Wetlands Progress Tracker.

CanVis is a visualization program used to "see" potential impacts from coastal development or sea level rise. Users can download background pictures and insert the objects (hotel, house, marina, or other objects) of their choosing. The software is used by municipalities to brainstorm new ideas and policies, undertake project planning, and make presentations.

The Nature Conservancy in collaborating with citizens, public agencies, academic institutions and other nonprofit groups is working to restore the health of Green Bay for people and nature. One of the many challenges facing the bay is the loss of coastal wetlands, which clean polluted water, intercept waste, protect our shorelines from erosion, provide food and shelter for migratory birds and serve as nurseries for fish and other aquatic life.

Overview The Global Surface Water Explorer maps the location and temporal distribution of water surfaces at the global scale for 1984-2015 and provides statistics on the extent and change of those water surfaces. Users can view the data on an interactive map or download datasets.

SimCoast is a fuzzy logic rule-based expert system designed to enable researchers, managers and decision-makers to create and evaluate different policy scenarios for coastal zone management. It is interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral. It aims to combine traditional and advanced specialist knowledge about coastal zones with a set of reasoning and analytical tools. Experts involved include engineers, natural and social scientists, lawmakers, administrators, community and national leaders.