Indicator Type	Information	Status
Beach Access	6	5
Water Quality	8	3
Beach Erosion	9	-
Erosion Response	-	3
Beach Fill	2	-
Shoreline Structures	2	5
Beach Ecology	1	-
Surfing Areas	1	NA
Website	4	-
Coastal Development	{{{19}}}	{{{20}}}
Sea Level Rise	{{{21}}}	{{{22}}}

Websites

Mississippi Coastal Management and Planning Office

Mississippi's Coastal Management Program is housed within the Department of Marine Resources (DMR). Together, the DMR and CMP websites provide information on beach access and wetlands/beach ecology. There is also some information on beach water quality and pollution prevention. Better information on these indicators can be found on the website of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), particularly through this link.

The educational stuff for kids link has useful information on wetlands, estuaries, beach ecology and watersheds.

The MDEQ website is also a good source of information on beach erosion. The Mississippi Office of Geology, Coastal Geology Section within the MDEQ has numerous sources of data covering a wide variety of coastal monitoring and sampling data types.

Very little information could be found on these websites regarding beach fill, shoreline structures or erosion response.

There are links to publications and regulations from the DMR site.

NOAA's latest evaluation of Mississippi's Coastal Management Program noted:

..."the evaluation team noted key opportunities for Public Affairs to provide additional assistance to the MSCP (1) updating, expanding, and better organizing the Coastal Program’s website; (2) highlighting the link between MSCP and the national CZMA Program; (3) highlighting and communicating MSCP’s activities and program successes to the general public through various venues; (4) assisting with development and distribution of information on wetland permitting decisions to the public; and (5) promoting new concepts such as “living shorelines” to different audiences. Since the evaluation site visit, the MSCP has phased out support of Public Affairs. In the future, if federal funding is used to support a Public Affairs position, specific priority tasks and objectives should be included in the cooperative agreement. Although the MSCP is no longer directly supporting a Public Affairs position, OCRM encourages the MSCP to think strategically about communication needs and to pursue priority projects."