ICAN contributes to the Ocean Teacher Global Academy course on Story Maps

From 13 - 15 September 2017 OTGA held a course on Ocean Literacy and Story Telling Maps at INVEMAR in Santa Marta, Colombia. Several members of the ICAN Steering Group were lecturers for the course. Information on the course can be found at http://classroom.oceanteacher.org/course/view.php?id=289

ICAN 8 Coastal Web Atlases – Enhancing Ocean Literacy Santa Marta, Colombia

ICAN Steering Group Meeting

The International Coastal Atlas Network’s Steering Group meet on 11 September hosted by INVEMAR in Santa Marta, Colombia. The morning session met with the current ICAN work plan, some time spent on the strategic planning, and decisions on the future membership of the Steering Group. (See page x for information on the new ICAN Steering Group). The afternoon session was open and included several participants from the Ocean Teacher Global Academy course that started later in the week. The afternoon session dealt with how ICAN can support other IODE projects with reports on the Caribbean Marine Atlas, SPINCAM and the African Marine Atlas.

ICAN 8 workshop Coastal Web Atlases – Enhancing Ocean Literacy

The ICAN 8 workshop Coastal Web Atlases – Enhancing Ocean Literacy was held on the following day, 12 September 2017 starting with the keynote lecture by Francesca Santoro, the ocean literacy lead for the International Oceanographic Commission. Dr. Santoro’s lecture was followed by sessions on Latin American approaches to ocean literacy, coastal web atlases and their role in advancing ocean literacy and technology supporting ocean literacy. Several presentations were made remotely including Marcia Berman’s presentation on  Story Maps and Coastal Web Atlases to support Climate Literacy in Virginia and David Hart’s presentation Advancing Great Lakes Literacy through the Wisconsin Coastal Atlas. Marcia and David were unable to attend ICAN 8 in person due to travel delays caused by Hurricane Irma. Other contributed presentations included Quantification of the impacts of tropical cyclones on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Western Caribbean Sea and on the urban, semi-urban and rural localities of Mexico by Agustín Fernández Eguiarte, Informatics Unit for the Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences of UNAM, Mexico, Science-society interface - From Academic Data to Practical Knowledge concerning Coastal Areas by Dr. Silvia Sartor, Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, The Sydney Harbour Atlas – Raising awareness of an urban marine ecosystem  by Andrew Sherin, Coastal and Ocean Information Network (COIN) Atlantic, Canada.  Presentations from Latin America included SPINCAM by Alejandro Iglesias Campos, IOC, UNESCO, Colombian national activities - Paula Cristina Sierra-Correa, INVEMAR and Julian Monroy, CIOH, Colombia’s Oceanographic and Hydrographic Research Center and the Caribbean Marine Atlas 2 by Carolina Garcia Valencia, INVEMAR.

The workshop ended with a tour of the Marine Natural History Museum located at INVEMAR and a tour of the laboratories at INVEMAR.

A Story Map version of the ICAN 8 report is available for viewing at http://arcg.is/2ft3k4Z

ICAN - Best Practice Guide to Engage your Coastal Web Atlas User Community

ICAN have compiled this best practice user interaction guide because successful interactions with potential Coastal Web Atlas (CWA) users during the development of any CWA are as vital for the success of the resource as the continued interaction with existing audiences to ensure longevity and continued use. This hand book is conceived as a practical “cookbook” and was compiled by gathering information from ten atlas developers as well as extracting relevant information from ICAN workshop reports. The information has been summarised and analysed leading to two sets of recommendations, one focused on the development of new atlases and the other focused on how to maintain interactions with audiences of already developed atlases. We hope that the handbook will allow both new and established CWA developers and hosts to benefit from best practice examples as well as learn from experienced challenges, in order to increase capacity to successfully interact with user communities and target audiences, while managing coastal and marine data and information in a user friendly way. The final product is a resource that hopes to complement and link to a variety of OceanTeacher activities, support IODE training in courses, thereby being of value to all who manage and present marine data and information.

Now available as IOC Manuals and Guides No. 75:

http://www.oceandocs.org/handle/1834/9579

COINAtlantic Announces the Sydney Harbour Atlas

COINAtlantic has released  version 1 of an Atlas for the harbour of Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Atlas is built on a customized version of COINAtlantic’s Search Utility and displays map layers served from several OGC compliant web mapping services including COINAtlantic’s own WMS service of the data stored in the OBIS Canada Information  Publication Tool, and other web mapping services provided by the Province of Nova Scotia and the Government of Canada. The Atlas is intended to display spatial data relevant to an urbanized coastal ecosystem.

The Atlas can viewed at:
http://coinatlantic.tools/csu/?mapset=sydney_harbour

Sample map from the Sydney Harbour Atlas with a partial legend

State of New York Gateway: Focus on Data

Gateway Team, Division of Community Resilience and Regional Programs
Office of Planning & Development, New York Department of State
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Focus on Data!

Great Lakes folks, and specifically those in the Lake Erie and Niagara River Watershed, will be pleased to hear that, in partnership with Erie County Environment & Planning, we’ve started adding information from a watershed Atlas they have developed.  There are now 14 new datasets related to their mapping effort available on the Gateway with another batch coming soon.  These are state-wide and in some instances region–wide datasets that Erie County used in developing their Atlas.  You can find the information by simply searching on “Lake Erie”, here is a link to the map viewer with all of the new datasets added to the view: Lake Erie & Niagara River Watershed.

In addition to more Lake Erie & Niagara Watershed data, Long Island Sound-Centric folks should stay tuned for the next Gateway Update…

As always we appreciate suggestions regarding additional geospatial information that you would help you in your work or to understand your world around you.

Download Away!

About two weeks ago some astute users notified us that there were issues with downloading some of the datasets.  We identified the issue and it was in effect a “switch” that hadn’t been turned on for datasets that we’ve added since the beginning of the year.  This has been rectified and all datasets that are indicated as available for download are now telling the truth!  A big Thank You to those who provided us feedback on the bug, keep up the great work! 

The Numbers

We had a BIG month in April with some major milestones achieved and surpassed. On Thursday, 27 April, the Gateway exceeded 100,000 pageviews and surpassed 18,000 visits since its launch on 29 September  2015.  April 2017 experienced the third highest monthly visitor count out of the 19 months the site has been publicly available, the two higher months were October 2015 (essentially the month of its launch) and June 2016 (when we first sent an eblast about the Gateway out to the local government listserv with over 13,000 recipients).

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! As always, please don’t hesitate to provide feedback on your visit to the Gateway so that we may continue to improve on it’s usefulness and your experience.

Project SPINCAM and its integration into Chile's National Environmental Information System (SINIA)

Marcos Serrano Ulloa, Jefe Depto. de Estadísticas e Informacíon ambiental
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In Chile, the second phase of the international cooperation project “South Pacific Information and Data Network to support Integrated Coastal Area Management” (SPINCAM), directed by the International Oceanographic Commission COI-UNESCO and the Permanent Commission of the South Pacific (CPPS), began in 2012. It had as the lead agency the National Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as the technical lead agency the Ministry of Environment, the institution responsible by the storing and maintaining data collections.

In 2012, the Ministry of Environment, through of exempt resolution N° 0179 created the Inter-Institutional Committee for Environmental Information in order to coordinate public environmental information. Also, under this committee was created in 2014 the Subcommittee of Coastal and Marine Information, with the target to provide and validate specific information for the coastal and marine area, which would be key in coordinating and managing SPINCAM project activities at the national level.

This subcommittee is made up for representatives of the various institutions and / or public services that have a direct relationship with the administration and management of the coastal and marine borders, such as the Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture (SUBPESCA in Spanish), which is mainly responsible for the regulations and regulatory framework for the fishing and aquaculture activities of the country; the Institute for Fisheries Promotion (IFOP in Spanish) dedicated to research; The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (SERNAPESCA in Spanish), the service with inspection powers and sanitary management in relation to fishing activities and extraction of resources; the Undersecretary for the Armed Forces (SSFFAA), the institution directly related to  use of the coastal border; and finally, the managing body of maritime activity at the National level, the General Directorate of Maritime Territory and Merchant Marine (DIRECTEMAR in Spanish).

During 2015, an analysis of the information and data available in the institutions that make up the Subcommittee was made, in order to build a set of indicators that contribute to integrated management of the Coastal and Marine borders. Based on the data provided by these agencies, it was possible to create indicators that account for pressures on coastal and marine ecosystems. (e.g.: the number of aquaculture and maritime concessions at national level, catch and landing quotas of the main commercial species, environmental emergencies occurring in marine areas, either anthropogenic (oil spills) or natural (red tide). The later is measured through the relative abundance of some micro algae carrying poisons or harmful algal blooms (FAN).

Also, indicators related to the state of biodiversity were constructed based on sea lions censuses, cetacean sightings, and evolution of resources exploited in Benthic Resource Management Areas (AMERB in Spanish).

In addition, response indicators were considered that account for the inspection effort at the fisheries level through the inspections carried out by SERNAPESCA.

SPINCAM’s Pilot Case Algarrobo, El Quisco and El Tabo

In SPINCAM II‘s framework a local experimental area was considered at the local level located at Algarrobo, El Quisco and El Tabo, in the province San Antonio, in the Valparaíso Region.

The area has several Nature Sanctuaries and places of tourist interest, making it a potential tourist resort, especially in summer. In the Figure 2, are represented 3 Nature Sanctuaries located within the Pilot Project area.

In this pilot zone (Figure 1), a joint effort between the Ministry of Environment, the Municipalities of Algarrobo, El Quisco and El Tabo, and the main local actors, built a set of indicators that were included in the publication “Indicators for Integrated Coastal Zone Management: Pilot Case SPINCAM of local level  Algarrobo, El Quisco and El Tabo”. The document (Figure 3), describes the environmental management developed in each local level and included a total of 26 indicators that account for the strong tourist and real estate pressures, of the state of the study area and the social and / or governmental responses to these pressures, including topics such as:

• Transient Population
• Generation of Waste at the Communal Level
• Sales by Economic Sector
• Fish Landings
• Recycling Activities
• Projects with Environmental Protection Funds
• Water Quality for Recreational Use
• Biodiversity indicators such as the census of birds in the lagoon El Peral and a census framed in the Islet Pájaro Niño.

National Environmental Information System (SINIA)

The Ministry of Environment (MMA) administers the National Environmental Information System (SINIA in Spanish), which is the main gateway to environmental information available to the public in Chile. The functions of SINIA, defined by the Department of Environmental Information of the Ministry of Environment, articulate the environmental information of the country and make it easy and timely for citizens to access.

The dissemination mechanism protects the right of access to the environmental information to any person (Law N°19.300, 1994), in order to facilitate accessibility and exchange of information. In 2013, an improvement to SINIA was developed under international standards (Dublin Core and ISO 19.115) through a Metadata Catalog, which allows organizing the information and accessibility by citizens. The Dublin Core standard is used for the description of documentary information, indicators and databases, while the ISO 19.115 standard, describes geospatial information like a vector, images or data in raster format.

As shown in Figure 4, two other elements included in this redesign are: Spatial Data Infrastructure (IDE in Spanish) which allows the spatial visualization of environmental information and the Environmental Information Integrator System (SIIA) focused on statistical information and indicators.

Figure 3. Cover of the publication Project SPINCAM’s Pilot Case

Considering that one of the objectives pursued in the second part of the SPINCAM project was to generate information systems that support the development of indicators and their spatial representation, it was necessary to migrate and integrate the information and data related to the SPINCAM project with the National Environmental Information System and the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Ministry of the Environment, to support the need to visualize the data and coastal-marine information through these systems, supporting decision making.

Some indicators was constructed with the information contained in the institutions1 that were included in the information analysis.

The following were considered within the section of SPINCAM that was incorporated within the SINIA:

• Indicators: You can view the indicators constructed on the analysis of information, and data available at institutional level.
• Maps: The SDI SPINCAM services are presented as:
  • Migration 2002 Coastal Communes.
  • Fishing Coves.
  • Number of fishermen per cover.
  • Landing per cover.
• Publications: There are about 100 documents and publications of the country,  inside the platform Ocean Docs2, corresponding to reports of research and coastal and marine information, that considered studies related to the flora, fauna, oceanographic and socioeconomic variables located in the Coastal Marine Areas of Multiple Uses in our country,  technical reports prepared by the Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture in relation to the plans of monitoring of the Areas of Management of Benthic Resources (AMERB) and studies related to marine protected species in Chile, such as cetaceans, sea lions, Humboldt penguin and other species representative of coastal protected areas, which will serve as a base line for upcoming scientific studies on the coasts Chilean.

In the next stages of SPINCAM, we expect to have the data related to the Coastal Environmental Observation Program (POAL in Spanish) that constitutes DIRECTEMAR. This program will allow the capture data of marine and freshwater environmental quality measured in different bodies of water, distributed throughout national jurisdiction, including Antarctica and Easter Island. These measurements are performed in different water bodies of jurisdiction of the Maritime Authority, and are geolocated in the SDI.

References

1. Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture (SUBPESCA) and National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (SERNAPESCA)
2. OceanDocs - http://www.oceandocs.org/handle/1834/5392

ICAN at IODE-XXIV

The IOC Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange held its Twenty-fourth Session (IODE-XXIV) at the Renaissance Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia between 28 and 31 March 2018.  The IODE Session was attended by 67 participants from 31 IOC Member States and 5 Organizations.  Each IODE project reported progress over the last inter-sessional period. 
 

ICAN co-chair Marcia Berman reported progress and highlights on behalf of ICAN.  Most notable was the final transition of the website to the IODE platform (http://ican.iode.org/), the publication of two newsletters, presentations at 10 scientific and international meetings by ICAN members, and the publication of the ICAN-Best Practice Guide to Engage Your CWA User Community (Kopke K. & Dwyer N. (Eds.).(2017). Paris. Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC Manuals and Guides 75) 28 pp. (English) (IOC/2016/MG/75)];(OceanDocs: http://hdl.handle.net/1834/9579). 

The Committee welcomed the work achieved by ICAN and the growth of the network; urging relevant organizations and projects to join the ICAN community.  In addition, the Committee reviews requests from all projects for funding for the next intersessional period.  ICAN requested a total of $33,500 USD to support continued web development, expert travel, the development of a searchable coastal web atlas catalogue, and the organisation and execution of ICAN-8 and the biennial face to face ICAN Steering Group Meeting.  The Committee appropriated $24,250 over the next two year cycle; acknowledging the importance of all items identified in the proposed work plan.   

ICAN CWA User Interaction Guide

ICAN is very pleased to announce that "ICAN - Best Practice Guide to Engage your Coastal Web Atlas User Community" is now available as IOC Manuals and Guides No. 75

We have compiled this best practice user interaction guide because successful interactions with potential Coastal Web Atlas (CWA) users during the development of any CWA are as vital for the success of the resource as the continued interaction with existing audiences to ensure longevity and continued use. This hand book is conceived as a practical “cookbook” and was compiled by gathering information from ten atlas developers as well as extracting relevant information from ICAN workshop reports. The information has been summarised and analysed leading to two sets of recommendations, one focused on the development of new atlases and the other focused on how to maintain interactions with audiences of already developed atlases. We hope that the handbook will therefore allow both new and established CWA developers and hosts to benefit from best practice examples as well as learn from experienced challenges, in order to increase capacity to successfully interact with user communities and target audiences, while managing coastal and marine data and information in a user friendly way. The final product is a resource that hopes to complement and link to a variety of OceanTeacher activities, support IODE training in courses, thereby being of value to all who manage and present marine data and information.

National Coastal and Marine Atlas for the South Pacific Zone of Panama

Luz Guerrero Robles
Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama
Ricardo de Ycaza
Ministry of Environment of Panama

The Panamanian Aquatic Resources Authority (ARAP) and the Ministry of Environment of Panama have been involved in the SPINCAM project since 2009 and worked on the basis of measurable indicators over time.

The National Coastal and Marine Atlas for the South Pacific Zone of Panama was generated as a technical and integral information repository, which serves as an instrument to support marine-coastal management and planning initiatives. It was designed under the National Cartographic Base rules at a scale of 1:250,000 whose information is stored in geographic coordinates (WGS 84 Reference System).

The National Coastal and Marine Atlas for the South Pacific Zone of Panama is a basic tool accessible by public managers for the diagnosis, detection of threats, hazards, vulnerability and risks focus towards coastal and marine management and planning. This analysis tool will help to identify the feasible zones of the country for conservation and protection according to technical, environmental and social criteria.

The National Atlas contains a number of coastal indicators related to coastal economy, population density, marine protected areas, coastal concession, population dynamics, water quality, fisheries, coastal ecosystems, all fully sustainable and measurable.

The fisheries indicator, for example, has served as an operational tool in fisheries management for national authorities.

It integrates information on catches, landing and fishing effort to determine the area with the highest concentration of marine coastal species in order to design fishing management strategies based on this indicator.

On the other hand, the national atlas also includes a detailed indicator on coastal population density. The distribution of coastal human population indicates that the concentration of almost half of the country’s population inhabits the coastal zones of Panama. This shows the increasing pressures on coastal ecosystems and services which has an amplified effect due to the disordered occupation of the land, therefore, increasing the risk of coastal degradation.

The National Atlas also includes a local pilot project called “The Coastal and Marine Atlas for the Archipelago of Las Perlas”. The Special Management Zone (ZEM) of the Las Perlas Archipelago, located in the district of Balboa, province of Panama, was created with the purpose to protect marine-coastal resources, increase productivity and maintain the biodiversity of their ecosystems, in the neighboring area of the Panama Canal.

Thirteen (13) indicators were defined and integrated in the Coastal and Marine Atlas for Las Perlas which will be used to guide local decision makers, communities and other regions of Panama.

Finally, the increasing alteration and degradation towards coastal and marine resources is leading to revaluate community agreements, laws and regulatory framework in order to protect the ecosystems, implementing  the use of the fishing and marine resources considering their limitations, and to work on the concept of Marine spatial planning.

New York Geographic Information Gateway - New Fresh Face!

Jeffrey L. Herter
Division of Community Resilience and Regional Programs
Office of Planning & Development
New York Department of State
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The Gateway has a new look, come check it out: http://opdgig.dos.ny.gov/index.html#/home The NY Department of State Office of Planning & Development updated the home page of the Geographic Information Gateway (Gateway) to a scrolling format which is more mobile device-friendly. The clean, easy to access interface has all the original functionality of the Gateway, with access to four focus areas on the Great Lakes, Waterfront Revitalization, Atlantic Ocean and Climate Change and Resilience and four developed stories on Submarine Canyons, Offshore Energy, DOS Risk Areas and Living Shorelines.

New Inter-Site Connectivity

A new functionality has been added to some of the mappers within the Submarine Canyon Story http://opdgig.dos.ny.gov/#/storyTemplate/4/1/1 You can now open the data layer(s) being displayed in the story mapper in the Gateway’s main map viewer to allow you to explore other information in relation to the data set being used to illustrate the story.  How can you tell if you can use this functionality?  Just look for a little globe icon in the upper right corner of the interactive mapper…if it’s there you can click on that icon and all the information in the story mapper will be loaded in the main map viewer which will then allow you to add other layers.  It works the other way too!  If you’re in the Gateway’s main map viewer and have a data layer added to the viewer and you see an open book icon in the legend for that data layer, e.g. Main map viewer with Summer Flounder  you can click on the icon and the story mapper where that data is being used as an example will open and allow you to explore the story further.  We will be building this inter-site connectivity into all our stories, so stay tuned for those updates!

Back on Social Media

After a brief hiatus and a little “now you see me now you don’t” action, we have reactivated the Gateway facebook page https://www.facebook.com/informationgateway/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/NYGateway You can stay up to date with its progress on Facebook and/or by following our Twitter feed. Please like us and share us on fb and retweet!

The Numbers

Sometime during the day on 15 November 2016 visitors exceeded over 1000 hours spent using the Gateway and on 23 November 2016 the Gateway received its first visit from Tunisia bringing the total number of countries to visit from outside the United States to 76.  Notably, the Gateway continues to show steady increases in the quality of visits indicated by increased # of pageviews/month, actions/visit and duration of visits, while the “bounce rate percentage” (folks leaving the site after one action) continues to be in the single digits.

We’ve got more big changes (teaser: like a big data slug for Long Island Sound, increased inter-site connectivity and more focus areas) coming in the next month or so, so stay tuned!