Incorporating West Coast Groundfish Survey Data into the Offshore

Component of the Pacific Northwest Coast Ecoregional Assessment

– Allison Bailey, Sound GIS & Zach Ferdana, The Nature Conservancy

 

In the Pacific Northwest, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been involved in marine ecoregional conservation assessment since 2001 (Ferdaña et. al., 2006).  However, most of the existing work had focused on the coastal and nearshore environment.   For this project, TNC wanted to expand these assessments to include offshore areas.  Specifically, we focused on reviewing and assessing the utility of the existing groundfish trawl survey data from the National Marine Fisheries Service for use in TNC's spatially-explicit marine ecoregional planning process.  We investigated the spatial characteristics of these data, as well as various metrics or indices to summarize the data for use in TNC's conservation planning tool, MARXAN.  Because these data were not collected for this type of analysis, we must be cautious in their use.  However, we must also acknowledge that these are the only coastwide spatially-explicit data set for describing marine fish diversity, and therefore, despite various caveats, they can provide valuable information for conservation purposes.

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Custom Applications with Google Earth

– Matt Paskus, Western Washington University

 

Google Earth (GE) provides a conduit for collaborative, imagination, research, and creativity. The open platform that GE provides, allows developers, planners, and educators to reach various audiences by offering new and exciting ways of presenting data. Geographic data can be tailored in various formats geared towards any specific industry. GE’s open platform provides an open template with the ability to view the earth from a different prospective by representing features and/or themes within a geographic region, line, or point on the earth’s surface. As our world becomes more interconnected, GE provides an excellent medium for reaching a large audience.

 

Matt Paskus will demonstrate two applications viaTime and transCalc which utilizes GE’s openness. viaTime was developed in order to teach students not only about distance, time, and geographical locations, but how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be tailored to meet a child’s creativity and imagination. The application viaTime offers a unique perspective into the transportation industry allowing children to create their own airline and opening their eyes to the world of geography and transportation. transCalc was designed to illustrate the inbound Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) with data provided by the Department of Transportation.

 

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Open Source Internet Mapping Applications

– Steve Walker, Middle Fork GIS

 

Steve Walker will demonstrate internet mapping applications built upon the open-source UMN Mapserver;  the Ka-Map! AJAX-based user interface; the PostGresql/PostGIS database back-end; and the Python and PHP scripting languages.  Walker will also provide users with web resources (e.g the FWTools package) so that they may try their own do-it-yourself internet mapping solutions.

 

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Using Pictometry for Shoreline Inventory and Enterprise Imagery

– Mike Pelela & Peter Gill, Whatcom County Planning & Development Services

 

Pictometry imagery and software is currently utilized at Whatcom County for numerous applications across county departments.  The Pictometry product contains high resolution oblique and orthographic imagery from 2004 and 2005.  The imagery was obtained to support the Whatcom County Shoreline Management update, but the technology has been utilized throughout the organization.  Key features of the supporting image software include: inventory functions, feature measurement, and multi-view capabilities.  Planning and Development Services staff (Mike Pelela and Peter Gill) will discuss software and imagery capabilities as well as deployment throughout Whatcom County departments.