Gateway News: Exciting Additions & Partnerships
Jeff Herter
Special Projects Manager, Office of Planning, Development & Community Infrastructure, NY Department of State
Happy Spring!
I hope you are all healthy and staying safe and getting out locally to enjoy Spring unfolding during this interesting time. While we are working from home, as many of you may be as well, we’ve been able to make some exciting updates to the Gateway! Maybe you’ve got a little bit more time on your hands to check these new additions out.
New Story!
On April 22nd, Earth Day, we launched our first new story in over 2 years! The South Shore Estuary Reserve staff worked with Gateway Core Team to develop a story about the importance of shellfish in the Reserve from both an ecosystem and economic standpoint, the challenges faced by this resource and how the State and its partners are improving the estuary. The Shellfish story is now live on the SSER focus page on the Gateway and a banner has been added across the top of the Homepage which will take you directly to the new story as well.
New Datasets Added!
We also have a new dataset added to the Gateway that is SSER-related as well, the 2018 SSER Benthic Habitat map was uploaded April 28th! If you search on SAV in the search box on the Homepage, you’ll see it as one of the returns. You can also get to it by opening the focus viewer on the SSER Focus Page, the dataset gets pre-loaded as one of the default datasets in that viewer. This mapping effort was carried out in partnership with Governor’s Office of Strom Recovery (GOSR), NOAA Office of Coastal Management, NY Department of State, NYS DEC and many other partners. This dataset is an update of the 2002 mapping that was done by our Office and NOAA Coastal Services Center.
Look for more data related to this mapping effort coming soon too! There is a companion dataset, a change detection layer, which compares 2002 with 2018, it will highlight Submerged Aquatic Vegetation areas that have increased, decreased or changed in composition in those intervening 16 yrs.
Resilience and Shoreline Management
While I have your attention, there are a few other significant accomplishments our Office made during Earth week that we’d like to bring to your attention.
First, we released of a set of “Model Local Laws to Increase Resiliency” aimed at helping communities planning for changing water levels in the face of climate change. The model local laws were required by the State’s Community Risk and Resiliency Act, which was part of Governor Cuomo’s post-Sandy efforts to embed resiliency into state and local policies, programs and permits. These local measures will also complement funding for resiliency projects in Governor Cuomo’s Restore Mother Nature Bond Act. The model laws provide guidance on specific measures that localities can take to reduce flood risk, particularly by managing development in high-risk areas and preserving natural features like wetlands and dunes that provide protection against flooding.
We also released a Statewide Shoreline Monitoring Framework report that evaluates natural shoreline management strategies to protect communities from flooding due to climate change. The document, “Measuring Success: Monitoring Natural and Nature-Based Shoreline Features in New York State,” will help the State and municipalities better understand how natural shoreline protections reduce storm flooding impacts, provide ecological services to humans and contribute to community socio-economic well-being. This project was partially funded by a special grant from NOAA and carried out in partnership with NYSERDA, project partners included a slew of agencies and organizations including Sea Grant and NY City Parks . Materials and knowledge gained from this report will result in updates to the Living Shorelines story on the Gateway (look for an announcement of that update soon!).
What do these have in common with the Gateway besides coming out of the Office of Planning, Development, and Community Infrastructure? Partnerships! My favorite tool!
Ocean Forum
For those of you who have been using the Gateway and following its progress due to the Atlantic Ocean focus area and offshore NY-related data, I wanted to make you aware of the Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean’s (MACO) Mid-Atlantic Ocean Forum. MACO will convene a virtual Mid-Atlantic Ocean Forum on Tuesday May 19 from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. A draft agenda for the webinar is available on the Forum web page, here are Speaker Bios and Background Material
The Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean was established by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) to foster collaboration among states, federal agencies, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and federally recognized tribes, and to engage stakeholders.
REMINDER!
If you click a link to the Gateway and see only a blank page with Gateway header and footer, just go to the url in the browser and remove the ”s” from https:// so that it reads https:// (Like this: https://opdgig.dos.ny.gov/#/home) You can trust us! We hope to get this issue fixed soon!
The Numbers
All 50 states and 3 U.S. territories have visited the Gateway and on average we get visits from 28 states outside of New York and 14 countries every month…last month, in April 2020, during this time of exile for the good of the realm, the Gateway saw visitors from 19 countries outside the US and 29 states outside of NY. The Gateway has received over 68,000 visitors since launching on September 29, 2015. Longtime average is now nearly 1240 user visits each month. As of today there have been over 290,000 pageviews, nearly 870,000 actions and the average monthly bounce rate is 11%. There have been over 350,000 minutes or over 5850 hours spent on the Gateway. We’ve said it before, but the Team continue to be amazed and gratified to see the continued use of the Gateway and we all thank you for your continued use and support! We hope you find even more uses and information on the Gateway as we work to improve it in the coming year!
Social Media
The facebook and Twitter icons at the bottom of Gateway pages link directly to our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/informationgateway/ and twitter account https://twitter.com/NYGateway You can stay up to date on facebook and/or by following our twitter feed. Please like us and share us on fb and retweet!
The Gateway does have an About page so if you’re new to this emails or need a refresher please follow this About link. You can also learn about the Office of Planning and Development (OPD) on the same About page.
As always, please don’t hesitate to provide feedback on your visit to the Gateway so that we may continue to improve on its usefulness and your experience.