Navigating the Wisconsin Coastal Atlas

The Wisconsin Coastal Atlas is a website that enables people to explore and analyze coastal issues, share coastal data, and make informed decisions about sustainable uses of the Great Lakes, with a particular focus on Wisconsin.

The Atlas's intended users include coastal resource managers, planners, researchers, educators, and citizen scientists interested in the Great Lakes.

The Atlas is divided into seven main sections: Maps, Tools, Learn, Catalog, Topics, Places, and Portals.

Each section contains featured resources and the Maps, Tools, Catalog and Learn sections provide access to a broader collection of resources that can be searched by key words. The featured resources have strong relevance for addressing important Great Lakes issues and have additional information provided to help guide their use. This includes videos that show how the resources are used in the context of addressing Great Lakes issues, documentation and relevant publication that provide a deeper perspectives.

The Maps section of the Atlas houses resources that are geared toward an exploration of the Great Lakes and their surrounding coast lines. This section contains many interactive maps that allow users to explore many broad topics related to the Great Lakes and can be a useful way to identify a particular question of interest.

Featured Map:  Wisconsin Shoreline Inventory and Oblique Photo viewer 

The Wisconsin Shoreline Inventory and Oblique Photo viewer is a map designed to help users better understand Wisconsin's Great Lakes shorelines and how they've changed over time. Users can visualize trends in shoreline inventory data over time and compare aerial photos from the 1970s to photos from present day to get a sense of how the shorelines have changed. This information can help inform decision-making for shoreline management and long-term coastal resilience.

Once you have a particular question or topic that you'd like to investigate further, head to the Tools section for more analytically-focused resources. The resources on this page are often more specific than those on the Maps page and are meant to answer a particular question or set of questions, or provide some data-driven insights into a problem.

Featured Tool:  Flood Resilience Scorecard 

The Flood Resilience Scorecard is a community-based comprehensive tool for assessing flood vulnerability through three different lenses: environmental, institutional, and social. The outcomes of the tool can be used to develop sustainable community policies and plans as planners and city officials work to create resilient communities.

The Learn page contains a variety of learning-oriented resources, ranging from an interactive computer game for school-aged children to guides to resilient community planning strategies. Teachers may find some of the resources in this section useful for guiding lesson plans about the Great Lakes.

Featured Learning Resource:  Great Lakes Quests 

Great Lakes Quests are virtual learning activities about coastal issues and places in Wisconsin. The quests contain education components like links to external content and inquiry-based questions for users to answer. There are two groups of quests: one focuses on coastal issues like resilience to coastal hazards, and the other features Wisconsin coastal counties.

The Catalog section of the Atlas showcases numerous online data portals where users can explore and download geospatial datasets that are relevant to the Great Lakes. These datasets come from many sources, and some can even be integrated into a tool from the Tools section for a deeper analysis of a particular issue.

Featured Data Portal:  GeoData@Wisconsin 

GeoData@Wisconsin is a data portal curated by the UW-Madison Robinson Map Library and the State Cartographer's Office. The portal contains current and historical data layers for counties across Wisconsin, NAIP aerial imagery, and county-based LiDAR data. The portal also houses a collection of Great Lakes-specific datasets that can be used to analyze coastal processes and issues.

If you're still looking to learn more about a particular topic related to the Great Lakes, the Topics page might be your answer. This section of the Atlas provides a deep dive into a selection of topics. Each topic contains links to relevant websites, presentations, tools, data, and community networks.

Featured Topic:  Great Lakes Water Levels 

The Great Lakes Water Levels topic collects a variety of articles, videos, StoryMaps, and other resources related to lake levels along the Great Lakes. Water levels on the Great Lakes are dynamic. They change in the shorter timeframe of seconds to days due primarily to wind patterns and waves and in the longer timeframe of months to years due to precipitation in the basin, evaporation, and flow through the rivers that connect the lakes. These resources can help people understand the variability of lake levels and how communities can become more resilient to extreme water levels.

To dive deeper into a specific location along the Great Lakes coast, head to the Places section. This section showcases locations along the Great Lakes, providing an overview of each area along with place-based learning resources, maps, and data. These resources can help users understand the ecological, cultural, and historical significance of a place.

Featured Place:  St. Louis River Estuary 

The St. Louis River Estuary place page collects a variety of resources related to the estuary. The St. Louis River Estuary is the largest freshwater estuary in North America and is the headwaters of the Great Lakes. The Estuary is home to a unique combination of estuarine wetland and aquatic habitats. The resources on the Atlas can help users understand the significance of the estuary, learn about current conditions, and find place-based learning opportunities to continue learning more about this location.

Finally, the Portals section of the Atlas highlights decision tool portals that contain numerous tools relevant for Great Lakes coastal resilience analysis and planning. These portals make it easy to search for a variety of visualization, predictive, and exploratory tools related to the Great Lakes.

Featured Portal:  NOAA Digital Coast 

NOAA's Digital Coast portal was developed to meet the unique needs of the coastal management community. The website provides decision tools related to emergency planning, sea level rise, water quality, conservation and restoration planning, ecosystem services, environmental justice, and other focus areas for coastal management.