Polygon layer displaying current areas of Phragmites in Peel Region, a subset of TRCA's Invasive Species Tracking dataset. Last updated on February 25th, 2025. Field DescriptionsSpecies: List of invasive species that are commonly identified in the field and/or managed by TRCA. One species is tracked per Invasive_Species polygon. If there are other species present in the same area a separate polygon is drawn for each.Coverage: Range of coverage densities to gauge how much of the polygon area is covered by the identified species.Date Collected (Date_Collected): Date invasive species polygon is drawn/identified.Date Revisited (Date_Revisited): Date of most recent site visit to show how up to date the polygon boundary is. This information is important to 1) confirm that a species boundary has NOT changed (Poly_Status = Current Boundary) or 2) if the species is no longer present, indicate when that was determined (Poly_Status = No Longer Present).Recommended Management (Recommended_Mgmt): Indicates what type of invasive management is recommended for this area.Chainsaw Required (Chainsaw_Req): Indicates if a chainsaw will be required to manage the invasive species ex: if there are woody stems.Further Management (Further_Mgmt): Indicates if further management of the species is required.Aquatic/Terrestrial (Aquatic_Terrestrial): Stems in standing water or not.Stewardship Friendly (Stewardship): Can the polygon be managed by a community group effort.Adjacent Landspread (Adjacent): Does the polygon spread over into an adjacent property.Height Class (Height_Class): Average height of stems in polygonPolygon Status (Poly_Status): This field is used to identify the most current data. Sites are often revisited and the extent of previously identified species may change. Poly_Status helps to keep a record of older data that needs to be archived, and allows staff to draw new updated boundaries without excessive polygon clutter due to older polygons at the same site. See statuses below:Current Boundary: Default status autofilled in the field for any new polygons drawn.Archive Feature (boundary has changed): When revisiting a site where a boundary has changed and a new polygon needs to be drawn to reflect the current boundary, the status is changed to Archive Boundary.Archive Feature (coverage has changed): When revisiting a site where the coverage has changed and the boundary has not, the polygon is copied and added as a new feature. The attributes of the new feature are updated and the old boundary is archived. No Longer Present: Invasive species at the site is no longer present through management activities or other causes

Abstract This feature is a subset of Key ecological features. Key ecological features (KEFs) meet one or more of the following criteria:

a species, group of species, or a community with a regionally important ecological role (e.g. a predator, prey that affects a large biomass or number of other marine species); a species, group of species, or a community that is nationally or regionally important for biodiversity; an area or habitat that is nationally or regionally important for: enhanced or high productivity (such as predictable upwellings - an upwelling occurs when cold nutrient-rich waters from the bottom of the ocean rise to the surface); aggregations of marine life (such as feeding, resting, breeding or nursery areas); biodiversity and endemism (species which only occur in a specific area); or

a unique seafloor feature, with known or presumed ecological properties of regional significance.

KEFs have been identified by the Australian Government on the basis of advice from scientists about the ecological processes and characteristics of the area. A workshop held in Darwin in 2007 also contributed to this scientific advice and helped to underpin the identification of key ecological features. As new information becomes available, the spatial representations of identified key ecological features will continue to be refined and updated. Sixteen KEFs have been identified in the South-west Marine Region:

Commonwealth marine environment surrounding the Houtman Abrolhos Islands Perth Canyon and adjacent shelf break, and other west coast canyons Commonwealth marine environment within and adjacent to the west coast inshore lagoons Commonwealth marine environment within and adjacent to Geographe Bay Cape Mentelle upwelling Naturaliste Plateau Diamantina Fracture Zone Albany Canyons group and adjacent shelf break Commonwealth marine environment surrounding the Recherche Archipelago Ancient coastline at 90-120m depth Kangaroo Island Pool, canyons and adjacent shelf break, and Eyre Peninsula upwellings. Meso-scale eddies (points). This layer is shown separately here. Western demersal slope and associated fish communities. Western rock lobster. Benthic invertebrate communities of the eastern Great Australian Bight. No spatial representation available. Small pelagic fish of the South-west Marine Region. No spatial representation available.

Thirteen KEFs have been identified in the North-west Marine Region:

Ancient coastline at 125 m depth contour Ashmore Reef and Cartier Island and surrounding Commonwealth waters Canyons linking the Argo Abyssal Plain and Scott Plateau Canyons linking the Cuvier Abyssal Plain and the Cape Range Peninsula Carbonate bank and terrace system of the Sahul Shelf Commonwealth waters adjacent to Ningaloo Reef Continental Slope Demersal Fish Communities Exmouth Plateau Glomar Shoals Mermaid Reed and Commonwealth waters surrounding the Rowley Shoals Pinnacles of the Bonaparte Basin Seringapatam Reef and Commonwealth waters in the Scott Reef Complex Wallaby Saddle

Eight KEFs have been identified in the North Marine Region:

Carbonate bank and terrace system of the Van Diemen Rise Shelf break and slope of the Arafura Shelf Tributary canyons of the Arafura Depression Gulf of Carpentaria basin Gulf of Carpentaria coastal zone Plateaux and saddle north-west of the Wellesley Islands Pinnacles of the Bonaparte Basin Submerged coral reefs of the Gulf of Carpentaria

Three KEFs have been identified in the Coral Sea:

Tasmantid seamount chain Reefs, cays and herbivorous fish of the Queensland Plateau Reefs, cays and herbivorous fish of the Marion Plateau

Eight KEFs were identified in the Temperate East marine Region:

Tasmantid seamount chain Lord Howe seamount chain Norfolk Ridge Canyons on the eastern continental slope Shelf rocky reefs Elizabeth and Middleton reefs Upwelling off Fraser Island Tasman Front and eddy field

Eight KEFs were identified in the South-east Marine Region.

Seamounts, east and south of Tasmania West Tasmanian canyons Bonney coast upwelling Upwelling east of Eden Big Horseshoe canyon East Tasmania tropical convergence zone. No spatial representation available Bass cascade. No spatial representation available Shelf rocky reefs and hard substrate. No spatial representation available

In order to create a spatial representation of KEFs for each Marine Region, some interpretation of the information was required. DCCEEW has made every effort to use the best available spatial information and best judgement on how to spatially represent the features based on the scientific advice provided. This does not preclude others from making their own interpretation of available information. Currency Date modified: 10 February 2016 Modification frequency: None Data extent Spatial extent North: -8.88188° South: -46.689873° East: 171.782682° West: 109.233482° Source information This dataset is provided by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Online MapServer Online Metadata

Lineage statement In order to create a spatial representation of KEFs for each Marine Region, some interpretation of the information was required. The Department has made every effort to use the best available spatial information, and best judgement on how to spatially represent the features based on the scientific advice provided. This does not preclude others from making their own interpretation of the available information. Data dictionary All layers

Attribute name Description

NAME Official name of the Ecological Feature

AREA_KM2 Enclosed area of the listed feature in hectares

REGION Geographic region in which the feature is located

URL_LINK Link to webpage with feature-specific metadata

Contact Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, GeoSpatial@dcceew.gov.au

To assess site resilience, we divided the coast into 1,232 individual sites centered around each tidal marsh or complex of tidal habitats. For each site, we estimated the amount of migration space available under four sea-level rise scenarios and we identified the amount of buffer area surrounding the whole tidal complex. We then examined the physical properties and condition characteristics of the site and its features using newly developed analyses as well as previously published and peer-reviewed datasets.Sites vary widely in the amount and suitability of migration space they provide. This is determined by the physical structure of the site and the intactness of processes that facilitate migration. A marsh hemmed in by rocky cliffs will eventually convert to open water, whereas a marsh bordered by low lying wetlands with ample migration space and a sufficient sediment supply will have the option of moving inland. As existing tidal marshes degrade or disappear, the amount of available high-quality migration space becomes an indicator of a site’s potential to support estuarine habitats in the future. The size and shape of a site’s migration space is dependent on the elevation, slope, and substrate of the adjacent land. The condition of the migration space also varies substantially among sites. For some tidal complexes, the migration space contains roads, houses, and other forms of hardened structures that resist conversion to tidal habitats, while the migration space of other complexes consists of intact and connected freshwater wetlands that could convert to tidal habitats.Our aim was to characterize each site’s migration space but not predict its future composition. Towards this end, we measured characteristics of the migration space related to its size, shape, volume, and condition, and we evaluated the options available to the tidal complex to rearrange and adjust to sea level rise. In the future, the area will likely support some combination of salt marsh, brackish marsh and tidal flat, but predictions concerning the abundance and spatial arrangement of the migration space’s future habitats are notoriously difficult to make because nature’s transitions are often non-linear and facilitated by pulses of disturbance and internal competition. For instance, in response to a 1.4 mm increase in the rate of SLR, the landward migration of low marsh cordgrass in some New York marshes appears to be displacing high marsh (Donnelly & Bertness 2001). Thus, our assumption was simply that a tidal complex with a large amount of high quality and heterogeneous migration space will have more options for adaptation, and will be more resilient, than a tidal complex with a small amount of degraded and homogenous migration space.To delineate migration space for the full project area, we requested the latest SLR Viewer (Marcy et al. 2011) marsh migration data, with no accretion rate, for all the NOAA geographic units within the project area, from NOAA (N. Herold, pers. comm., 2018). Specifically, we obtained data for the following states in the project area: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. As accretion is very location-dependent, we chose not to use one of the three SLR Viewer accretion rates because they were flat rates applied across each geographic unit. For each geography, we combined four SLR scenarios (1.5’, 3’, 4’, and 6.5’) with the baseline scenario to identify pixels that changed from baseline. We only selected cells that transitioned to tidal habitats (unconsolidated shoreline, salt marsh, and transitional / brackish marsh) and not to open water or upland habitat. We combined the results from each of the geographies and projected to NAD83 Albers. The resultant migration space was then resampled to a 30-m grid and snapped to the NOAA 2010 C-CAP land cover grid (NOAA, 2017). The tidal complex grid and the migration space grid were combined to ensure that there were no overlapping pixels. While developed areas were not allowed to be future marsh in NOAA’s SLR Viewer marsh migration model, we still removed all roads and development, as represented in the original 30-m NOAA 2010 C-CAP land cover grid, from the migration space. We took this step as differences in spatial resolution between the underlying elevation and land cover datasets could occasionally result in small amounts of development in our resampled migration space. The remaining migration space was then spatially grouped into contiguous regions using an eight-neighbor rule that defined connected cells as those immediately to the right, left, above, or diagonal to each other. The region-grouped grid was converted to a polygon, and the SLR scenario represented by each migration space footprint was assigned to each polygon. Finally, the migration space scenario polygons that intersected any of the tidal complexes were selected. Because a single migration space polygon could be adjacent to and accessible to more than one tidal complex unit, each migration space polygon was linked to their respective tidal complex units with a unique ID by restructuring and aggregating the output from a one-to-many spatial join in ArcGIS. This linkage enabled the calculation of attributes for each tidal complex such as total migration space acreage, total number of migration space units, and the percent of the tidal complex perimeter that was immediately adjacent to migration space. Similar attributes were calculated for each migration space unit including total tidal complex acreage and number of tidal complex units.REFERENCESChaffee, C, Coastal policy analyst for the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council. personal communication. April 4, 2017.Donnelly, J.P, & Bertness, M.D. 2001. Rapid shoreward encroachment of salt marsh cordgrass in response to accelerated sea-level rise. PNAS 98(25) www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.251209298Herold, N. 2018. NOAA Sea Level Rise (SLR) Viewer marsh migration data (10-m), with no accretion rate, for all SLR scenarios from 0.5-ft. to 10.0-ft. for VA, NC, SC, GA, and FL. Personal communication Jan. 24, 2018. Lerner, J.A., Curson, D.R., Whitbeck, M., & Meyers, E.J., Blackwater 2100: A strategy for salt marsh persistence in an era of climate change. 2013. The Conservation Fund (Arlington, VA) and Audubon MD-DC (Baltimore, MD).Lucey, K. NH Coastal Program. Personal Communication. April 4, 2017.Maine Natural Areas Program. 2016. Coastal Resiliency Datasets, Schlawin, J and Puryear, K., project leads. http://www.maine.gov/dacf/mnap/assistance/coastal_resiliency.htmlMarcy, D., Herold, N., Waters, K., Brooks, W., Hadley, B., Pendleton, M., Schmid, K., Sutherland, M., Dragonov, K., McCombs, J., Ryan, S. 2011. New Mapping Tool and Techniques For Visualizing Sea Level Rise And Coastal Flooding Impacts. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center. Originally published in the Proceedings of the 2011 Solutions to Coastal Disasters Conference, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and reprinted with permission of ASCE(https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/).National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office for Coastal Management. “VA_2010_CCAP_LAND_COVER,” “NC_2010_CCAP_LAND_COVER,” “SC_2010_CCAP_LAND_COVER,” “GA_2010_CCAP_LAND_COVER,” “FL_2010_CCAP_LAND_COVER”. Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) Regional Land Cover. Charleston, SC: NOAA Office for Coastal Management. Accessed September 2017 at www.coast.noaa.gov/ccapftp.Schuerch, M.; Spencer, T.; Temmerman, S.; Kirwan, M L.; Wolff, C.; Linck, D.; McOwen, C.J.; Pickering, M.D.; Reef, R.; Vafeidis, A.T.; Hinkel J.; Nicholls, R.J.; and Sally Brown. 2018. Future response of global coastal wetlands to sea-level rise. Nature 561: 231-234.