Overview
Data Report
Gallery
Web Mapping
Links
2007
The South Jersey Bayshore Coalition (SJBC) is a group of 17 nonprofit organizations working to protect the estuarine ecosystem and the lands in the adjacent upland drainages on the Delaware Bay. The Coalition's mission is to preserve the cultural heritage and environmental integrity of Bayshore region through partnerships, advocacy, and public education. As part of its ongoing activities the Coalition received a grant from the Penn Foundation for an outreach project to increase awareness of the Bayshore's natural and cultural resources, and to provide the region with some essential planning tools.
GIS Data Inventory
The Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA) at Rutgers University worked with the Coalition to create an inventory of digital map data for the Bayshore region. Maps of vegetation cover, land use, prime agricultural soils, wildlife habitat, protected open space, and historic places are some of the nearly 40 different data sets collected or created at CRSSA for the inventory. The digital Map data sets are grouped into categories:
basemap layers;
land use / land cover data
agricultural resources;
estuarine and benthic conservation targets;
biodiversity and habitat conservation targets;
freshwater resources;
historic and cultural resources; and
planning and administrative layers
The data are stored in a geographic information system (GIS) and are available for public use and download through the CRSSA web mapping service. Additional information about the GIS data is included in the GIS Spatial Data Summary Report.
CRSSA also designed 20 full-color poster-sized maps for public use and display. The map series is intended to provide the date directly to the public without requiring GIS software and expertise. The maps, reduzed fr letter-sized printing, are available for viewing and download throughout the Bayshore Project Image Gallery.
Acknowledgements
This project was funded by a grant from the Penn Foundation, which was administered by the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC) for the Bayshore Coalition. All maps and data were compiled at the Center for Remote Sensing in July, 2007 with the invaluable assistance of Patti Burns and Sandy Batty of ANJEC, Suzanne McCarthy of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, and Eric Stiles of New Jersey Audubon Society. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of John Bognar and Jim Trimble at CRSSA in all aspects of the project.