The Caribbean Marine Atlas (CMA) Project

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The Caribbean Marine Atlas (CMA) Project
Ramon Roach Water Quality Analyst Marine
Research Department
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Outline

• Caribbean Marine Atlas
• Background
• Components
• AMA example
• CMA Development
• Stakeholder meeting
• Requirements
• CMA National Coordination
• Establishment of group
• Identification of training needs

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CMA Background

• CMA Project part of a global network of
  initiatives
• IOC
• Established in 1960
• Address scientific uncertainties for
  environmental management
• Improving operational capability for management
  and sustainable development
• Building capacity in marine science
• IODE
• Established in 1961
• Enhance marine research
• Facilitate exchange of data and information
• Provide access to data and data products
• NODCs and marine libraries
• ODINCARSA
• Established in 2000
• Facilitate capacity building, equipment and
  operational support at the regional level
• Products and services

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CMA Components

• Data and Information Distribution System
• Interactive, online mapping tool
• Collection of GIS data layers (vector and raster)
• User defined data frame within AOI
• Geographic features (scales, grids, coordinates)
• Advanced data control
• Layer list (one layer, multiple)
• Feature selection
• Results tables
• Metadata viewing
• Links to websites, documents, auxiliary data
• Data download
• Shapefiles
• Attached metadata
• Documents, images

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CMA Components Contd

• Thematic Data Structure
• Geosphere
• Natural hazards
• Soil types
• Land use
• Hydrosphere
• Bathymetry
• Physical oceanography
• Chemical oceanography
• Biosphere
• Habitats
• Marine flora and fauna
• Protected areas
• Atmosphere
• Climate
• Weather
• Human Environment
• Settlements
• Infrastructure

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African Marine Atlas Example

• AMA Project
• ODINAFRICA Initiative
• 1 Year startup
• Hosted by IODE

African Marine Atlas
Click to go to website and then click Go to
Atlas on the left hand menu
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Importance of CMA

• Local and Regional Data Management for Policy
  Making
• Integrated Coastal Area Management (ICAM)
• Data required for planning, implementation,
  monitoring, evaluation
• Regional scale information availability
• Communication with policy makers
• Inter and intradepartmental data sharing
• Local CMA equivalent
• Provide easy access to restricted data
• Data quality and metadata standards
• Improved data sharing
• Data and information warehousing
• Communication with public
• CMA and local equivalent
• Central access point for marine data
• Enhance data and data product delivery
• Reduce product delivery overhead

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Role of IODE

• Facilitation and Institutional Strengthening
• Capacity building for ocean/coastal data
  management
• Training Workshops
• Online training services
• Links to resources (software tools, data sources)
• Standards development for data descriptions and
  data quality control
• Training workshops
• Metadata standards information
• Metadata creation tools
• National data infrastructure development
• Distributed database technology training
• NODC establishment
• Equipment funding
• Products/services development
• Marine atlases
• Standard Databases
• Online data retrieval services

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CMA Project Development

• 1st Stakeholder Meeting for the Development of
  the CMA Project (October 8-10, 2007)
• Regional information gathering workshop
• Participants from 9 Caribbean countries
• Core initiative with scope for expansion
• Workshop Goals
• To inform the participating countries of the
  potential benefits of a Caribbean Marine Atlas
• To identify current national coastal zone
  management arrangements
• To identify national and regional coastal and
  marine issues that could be the focus of the
  Caribbean Marine Atlas
• To identify the national resource requirements of
  the participating countries to enable full
  participation in a Caribbean Marine Atlas Pilot
  Project
• To prepare a draft work plan of a Caribbean
  Marine Atlas Pilot Project, for submission to,
  and approval by the respective national
  governments

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Stakeholder Meeting

• Regional Stakeholder Exercises
• Priority Issues
• Primary environmental concerns
• Identification of indicators
• Identification of responsible agencies
• Data accessibility

High Priority Medium Priority Low Priority
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Workshop Conclusions

• Regional Priority Issues
• Coral Reefs, Seagrass, Mangroves
• Overexploitation
• Natural Hazards
• Beaches
• LBS Pollution

• Regional Data Access Issues
• Most or all essential indicator data collected
  (Barbados and Cuba leading)
• Data access from data holders tends to be
  problematic

• Regional Data Management Issues
• Little or no data quality control (geographic,
  range analysis)
• No established metadata schemes
• Lack of institutional resources
• Personnel and training
• Equipment

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CMA Requirements

• For the Atlas
• Identify geographic Area of Interest (AOI) for
  the Atlas
• Agree the topic outline
• Gather available data according to the scope of
  topics, geographic limits and temporal
  considerations
• Describe metadata and source location URLs
• Review gridded datasets for data value ranges
• Convert all data to appropriate GIS formats
• Shapefiles for vector data
• ASCII ArcGrids for gridded data and satellite
  imagery
• Geo-referenced images to accompany most arrays
• Clip all GIS files to the AOI
• Convert data to required products (e.g. seasonal
  climatological grids/contours)
• Convert these products to the correct GIS formats
  
• Create a browser interface to the GIS files, with
  links to the metadata files and source location
  URLs
• Publish the atlas on the Internet with a
  interface using static HTML pages
• Publish the atlas as an interactive Map Service
• Publish the browser-based atlas on DVD for
  dissemination
• Produce a hardcopy publication

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CMA Requirements

• For the National Atlas Coordinating Group
• Identify national teamleader
• Identify required training to participate in
  Atlas project
• Detail equipment requirements (and send to IODE
  secretariat)
• Identify if data are available in electronic or
  paper form
• Identify restrictions on use of data
• Locate all historical records available
  nationally
• Perform data quality control on data
• Conversion of data sets into shapefiles
• Import layers into national mapserver system

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CMA Training Courses

• Basic Courses
• DM 101 Introduction to Ocean Data
• Oceanographic measurements (parameters, units,
  conventions) programmatic and technical aspects
  of data collection data formats used for ocean
  data and their special characteristics
• DM 102 Ocean Data Collection
• Development Building a national ocean data
  collection from the World Ocean Database 2005 and
  other local and published data sources basic
  data analysis with popular software programs
• DM 103 Ocean Data Products Synthesis
• Developing a suite of standard and specialized
  ocean data analysis products from the national
  data collection, and the synthesis of these
  products with other available analyses in
  Geographic Information Systems

• Advanced Data Management
• DM 203P Geographic Information Systems for Coast
  Ocean Management
• An intensive, hands-on tutorial in the use of
  proprietary (ESRI) Geographic Information System
  software to assemble and analyse coastal and
  marine data for environmental management purposes

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CMA Training Courses

• Advanced Data Management Contd
• DM 203N Geographic Information Systems for Coast
  Ocean Management
• This course is the equivalent of DM 203P, with
  the major difference that the software used
  throughout is in the public domain

• Marine Atlas Courses
• DM 207 MapServer Application for a Marine Atlas
• This course introduces the Data Manager to an
  open source software application to build
  spatially-enabled internet applications to
  publish maps and to build an interactive map
  application demonstrator for a marine atlas. The
  African Marine Atlas is used here as the training
  model
• DM 210 Marine Coastal Atlases
• Practical workshop intended to address the
  creation of a Marine Coastal Atlas for a
  specific geographic area, including the
  construction of the static HTML interface to the
  GIS data products. The workshop builds upon the
  theoretical concepts presented in prior courses,
  but it includes the real-world considerations of
  exactly where the Atlas will cover, what themes
  will be included, and the construction of the
  actual products for this area

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Thank You