REMOTE-SENSING AND RELATING COASTAL DEVELOPMENT TO LIVING MARINE RESOURCES AND THEIR HABITATS

Coastal ecosystems, including those with natural areas (e.g., reserves, refuges, parks) receive virtually all of the water flowing off the continental United States. As the human population increases, so do waste loads and use of the terrestrial surface. Changes in land use result in changes in land cover, which affect water quality and, subsequently, coastal and estuarine habitats, and their living resources. Lack of understanding of the cumulative effects of land cover and changes in land cover on these habitats and their resources has limited the appropriate management of landscape activities. Additionally, in the United States, as elsewhere, human population in the coastal region is increasing at an ever-quickening pace. Our ability to monitor resultant land cover and habitat change has not kept pace with the change, and management, thus, has been more reactive than proactive. Remote sensing is a key element of monitoring land cover changes over broad areas of the coastal zone in a synoptic, relatively inexpensive, and dependable way. Such information, when assimilated into a geographical information system and integrated with transport and process-oriented models, would allow us to relate land cover and changes in land cover(i.e., development in the coastal zone) to effects on living marine resources; it also would permit proactive responses to continuing degradation and loss of coastal and estuarine habitats and their living marine resources.