Mapping Acadia's Rocky Seafloor With a Common Classification Standard

U.S. coasts are hit by big, complex storms every year, and working out what they do to the marine environment is a huge task. One tool that helps is the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) — in effect a vast field guide for identifying and classifying ocean life and the environments it lives in. With it, scientists can build detailed seafloor maps, and among their many uses is spotting what changed after extreme weather.

A Jonah crab hiding in rocky intertidal habitat at Acadia National Park. Image from the National Park Service / Crystal Lewis

From sandy shores to rocky ones

After Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast in 2012, scientists mapped coastal habitats in four national parks in the Northeast. All four had soft, sandy coastlines — unlike the rocky shores farther north.

A study published in Geosciences in October 2024 added Acadia National Park's rocky coast in Maine to that dataset. The aim: a template for describing rocky coastal habitats across the northeastern United States. It is the first detailed application of CMECS in Maine's rocky intertidal areas.

Sources

Based on "Applying Common Language to Create Seafloor Maps at Acadia," by the editors of Park Science magazine, Research Roundup, Volume 39, Number 1, Winter 2024–25, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It summarises Oakley and others, 2024, "Application of the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) to Create Benthic Geologic Habitat Maps for Portions of Acadia National Park, Maine, USA," Geosciences 14: 256.