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.