3.3 Representative Focal Areas
To explain some of the variation seen within the North Carolina coastal
system, we detailed the trends seen under locally specific management
and environmental conditions in SGAs B, E, and G (Figure 7). SGAs B, E,
and G were selected because they captured different modes of estuarine
and management variation, described in more detail in the following
sections. More specifically, they represent different classes of
estuarine drainage areas as defined by Engle et al. (2007), different
shellfish lease distribution, and different levels of developed land
change within the surrounding watersheds. Estuary drainage area
classifications were originally created by NOAA’s Coastal Assessment
Framework to incorporate tidal influence into watershed delineation
(NOAA, 2003). Engle et al. (2007) uses these areas to reclassify areas
through a system that includes area, depth, volume, freshwater flow, and
salinity to define an estuary type. This results in a coded class system
ranging from 1 to 9 (Engle et al., 2007). By using a variety of
different estuarine drainage area classes, we are effectively capturing
a variety of physical and hydrological conditions, which enriches the
interpretation of our results.