This two-year project will lead to a regional database for the salt marsh ecosystem bordering Georgia and South Carolina. The project will be built upon existing geographic information system databases at the University of Georgia Marine Institute, the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science in Athens, GA and the University of South Carolina Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine Biology and Coastal Research. Groups at Savannah State College and the Baruch Institute at North Inlet, SC, will also be involved. The goals of this project will be threefold. 1) Construction of a multi-level nested database tied to the North American Datum of 1983, with standardized classes of information for coastal land use/land cover, hydrology, and vegetation at regional and site- specific scales. 2) Development of data integration and analysis techniques that are appropriate for the construction and use of multi-level nested databases of coastal areas. 3) Determination of the optimum scales and resolutions of data needed to address questions for regional and site-specific studies, including assessments of the gain or loss of information as a result of moving between regional and site-specific layers of the database.
