Florida Coastal Engineering and Bird Conservation Geographic Information System (GIS) Manual

This report describes a Geographic Information System GIS that displays 500 sand placement events in Florida between 1959 and 2006. These events include beach nourishment projects, renourishment events, dune restoration projects, emergency berm placements, inlet bypassing, and beach dredged material disposal. Data were consolidated from disparate sources to provide a comprehensive GIS. Each event is represented by a unique line file containing attribute information on project type, year, action agency, data source, and borrow site when available. The GIS also includes point files representing survey data on the distribution andor abundance of six high-priority bird species from a variety of state-wide surveys. Bird data are presented for piping plover, snowy plover, red knot, least tern, black skimmer, and American oystercatcher. This report provides an overview of coastal engineering activities in Florida, focusing primarily on sand placement describes how these data have been tracked by agencies and suggests ways that this GIS could be regularly updated to provide a highly useful tracking system. Detailed descriptions of data in attribute fields are provided for both sand placement and bird survey shape files. The report also discusses an approach to the simultaneous presentation of bird data from multiple surveys with different methodologies.