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Marine Page 3

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(ECP and CTSP grantees, reports, and other sites of interest for conservation geograpy, mapping and GIS. Grantees are coded by program and year of grant at the end of their name/state, i.e. e91 means ECP grant in 1991. c=cstp, cm=ctsp-mac, cs=ctsp-software)

Galveston Bay Foundation, Tx e97 . (17324-A Highway 3 Webster, TX 77598 tele: (281) 332-3381 fax: (281) 332-3153 ) "The mission of the Galveston Bay Foundation is to preserve and enhance the Bay for its multiple uses. To accomplish this mission the Foundation has targeted four goals: - Education: Provide resources and guidance for education projects aimed at developing a constituency for the Bay, from schoolchildren to public officials. - Conservation: Develop projects aimed at preserving/enhancing the natural resources of the Bay system. - Research: Support the allocation of public and private resources for research into the multiple resources of the Bay system and ultimately establish a research endowment. - Advocacy: Encourage and actively seek solutions to conflicts among the diverse users of the Bay. Wise, prudent and careful utilization of administrative and legal proceedings when required and approved by a 2/3 majority of the Executive Board present and voting. " GIS STATUS: "GIS has definitely had an overall positive impact on the Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF), primarily by organizing and displaying the various elements of the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), which was the original and still is our main application of GIS. Using the GIS, we have been able to handle a large amount and variety of data and to select only the data that are relevant to each individual site as it is being described and evaluated. The GIS has the added benefit of being accessible to many users simultaneously. It allows us to avoid duplication of effort because all user's have immediate and easy access to the growing database. The alternative for the HCP project would have been to gather multiple copies of many maps and reports, each with its own format and scale and translate each to a new map and report. This would have been cumbersome, time-consuming, and would have resulted in much duplication of work. The HCP is a conservation program and so addresses an important element of the mission of the Galveston Bay Foundation. "

Heal The Bay, Ca e98 . ( Heal the Bay, 2701 Ocean Park Blvd. Suite 150, Santa Monica California 90405 USA tel:(310) 581- 4188 Fax: (310) 581- 4195 temai:htb@healthebay.org ) . "Heal the Bay was founded in 1985 when a small group of citizens became outraged when the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant applied for an exemption from the effluent discharge requirements outlined in the Clean Water Act. From this small group of citizen advocates, Heal the Bay has grown into an organization of over 10,000 members and volunteers. " GIS NEWS: "The Malibu Creek Watershed Stream Team is a group of dedicated citizen volunteers who will walk throughout the Malibu Creek Watershed to collect data that can be used by the various stakeholders in the region to protect and enhance the natural resources of the Malibu Creek Watershed. ..The Stream Walk volunteers will be armed with GPS units so that they can record the latitude longitude coordinates of the following items: Areas that are obviously degraded and are likely sources of sediment transport, locations of outfalls into the creeks and streams, areas of exotic invasive vegetation, barriers to steelhead migration, human alterations to the stream or stream bank, and locations of dumping or littering....The purpose of the program is to utilize volunteer labor to supplement the information needs of the various groups in the watershed, to educate the public about the unique ecological concerns in this area, and create citizen stewards who take an active role in identifying and solving problems. The Stream Team Program has been designed by the Graduate Department of Landscape Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona who have collected and created a large digital data base for this watershed using ArcView version 3.0 a and Spatial Analyst version 1.1. ...This information collected will ultimately be used to prioritize and institute restoration activities, to focus education activities that target the specific problems in this watershed, and to initiate planning and enforcement actions to correct violations that are degrading water quality or impacting the ecological function of this watershed. " See the Beach Report Card Map, see also the Geography/Watershed section .

Large Marine Ecosystems of the World Site . (NOAA/NMFS Narragansett Laboratory, 28 Tarzwell Drive, Narragansett, Rhode Island 02882 USA . Contact: Kenneth Sherman, email:Kenneth.Sherman@noaa.gov ) . "The 50 Large Marine Ecosystems are regions of ocean space encompassing coastal areas from river basins and estuaries to the seaward boundaries of continental shelves and coastal current systems. They are relatively large regions of distinct bathymetry, hydrography, productivity and trophically dependent populations. " Site includes Descriptions of LME's, DATA DOWNLOADS in Arc formats

Lithuanian Institute of Ecology, Baltic Sea Birds project (Gediminas VAITKUS, Lithuanian Ac. Sci. Akademijos 2, 2600 Vilnius, Lithuania GSM (+370-99) 99940 FAX (+370-2) 729257 e-mail:seabird@post.5ci.lt urls(bad): http://www.5ci.lt/users/seabird/public/Gedas.htm or http://www.5ci.lt/users/seabird/ ) "This page will cover the main issues related with studies of sea birds in the Baltic Sea, which were started on regular basis since winter 1991/92. We will try to establish links to other sea bird related Web sites. The page will cover some environmental information of the Baltic Sea, provide links to the related Web-sites of institutions involved in studies of the Baltic Sea. " See also Sea Bird Transect Counts software for sea bird line transect counts data storage and processing. You can download Dr. Vaitkus' Phd Dissertation: STUDIES OF SPATIAL STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF SEABIRD POPULATIONS IN EASTERN BALTIC .

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Ca e91 . (MBARI, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, CA 95039-0628 USA, Tel:(831) 775-1700, FAX:(831) 775-1620 GIS contact: Gerry Hatcher, gerry@mbari.org, extension 1758) "A unique private oceanographic center, the non-profit Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), was established in 1987 by David Packard (1912-1996) with the goal of developing state-of-the-art equipment, instrumentation, systems and methods of scientific research in the deep waters of the ocean. "GIS has been very popularly applied in land information system. However, It has been modestly used in oceanographic applications. The reasons are from many aspects, such as different data standards, different data accuracies, resolutions, densities, low positional accuracy, difficulties in acquiring and representing oceanographic data in multiple dimensions etc. MBARI is one of the few institutes which have the potential to develop a marine GIS." MBARI GIS PROGRAM: Projects: MBARI GIS Datasource Page . .Also see their 1998 report on the..Marine real-time GIS system : A customized application for at-sea navigation that saved them an estimated 6 survey days through improved efficiency and planning.

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Ca e98 . (C/O RICK STARR, MLML MARINE OPS, 7700 SANDHOLT RD., MOSS LANDING, CA 93955 USA tel:408-475-1584 GIS Contact: Ron White, email:RONWHITE1@AOL.COM) "The Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) are the marine research and teaching facilities which serve a consortium of seven California State Universities in Northern California. "

New England Aquarium, Boston MA c95 . (Central Wharf Boston, MA 02110 tel:617.973.5200) Our core mission is to promote, present, and protect the world of water. Through exhibits, research, conservation, and education, we seek to change the way people think about the world of water so they will want to protect it....Landmark studies on right whales, African lake cichlids, fisheries bycatch issues, bluefin tuna, and sea turtles, have established the Aquarium as an internationally recognized marine and aquatic conservation research center. Their Rescue and Rehab program releases animals to the wild and features an online map of wildlife movements .

NOAA National Ocean Service Special Projects Office . (Special Projects Office, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce, 1305 East-West Highway, SSMC IV, 9th floor Silver Spring, MD 20910 . Tel:(301) 713-3000 x168 Email: mailto:to_contact_special_projects@seamail.nos.noaa.gov) "The mission of the Special Projects Office is to provide expertise, products and services that help the National Ocean Service (NOS) to design and implement an effective program of coastal stewardship throughout the agency". Notable Achievements Include: NOAA's State of the Coast Report, NOS MapFinder Service, Sustainable Seas Expeditions, National Coastal Assessment and Data Synthesis Capability, National Estuarine Bathymetry, Benthic Habitats of the Florida Keys mapping project, NOAA's Estuarine Eutrophication Assessments - Report, NOAA's Estuarine Eutrophication Assessments - Summary . "National and regional coastal geographic assessment frameworks will provide a wide range of coastal stewards with co-registered geographic data, in digital and map-based formats, for organizing and comparing thematic data and information by watersheds, state and county boundaries, census tracts, ecosystem and/or other coastal units."

NOAA Office of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment (ORCA) . Was replaced by the Special Projects branch in reorganization but the website is being maintained it's topics as listed below are available on other sites: "ORCA is one of the four major line organizations of the National Ocean Service (NOS), within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce...You may learn more about the mission and organization of ORCA, select and download a variety of products, request publications, send e-mail to ORCA personnel, and get updates on ORCA projects and the ORCA Information Service by clicking on the appropriate HotText links...ORCA provides decisionmakers with comprehensive scientific information on the resources of the nation's coastal areas, estuaries, and oceans...Major Units within ORCA: ORCA Headquarters . Coastal Monitoring and Bioeffects Assessments Division (CMBAD), Damage Assessment Center (DAC) ,Hazardous Materials Response and Assessment (HAZMAT) Division , and the NOAA Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) Division: SEA organizes data on the nation's coastal and ocean resources and provides this information to decisionmakers in the form of environmental reports and papers, regional and national atlases, and desktop and geographic information system products. Through its five branches and support staff, the Division also supports other government agencies, such as NOAA's Sanctuaries and Reserves Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as other organizations concerned with protecting the United States' coastal and ocean environments of U.S. Programs: Biogeographic Characterization (BC) Branch, Data Management and Geographic Information Systems (DM&GIS), Decision Support Systems (DSS) Branch, Human Activities Assessment (HAA) Branch, Physical Environments Characterization (PEC) Branch, Pollution Sources Characterization (PSC) Branch ...Decision Support Systems (DSS) Branch: The Decision Support Systems (DSS) Branch has two missions. First, DSS works directly with coastal resource managers to design and implement desktop information systems intended to organize and display information for use in the management of the nation's ocean and coastal resources. Over the past several years systems have been developed for various coastal issues including fisheries management, water rights and uses in Texas, National Marine Sanctuary management, shoreline uses and regulation in Oregon, and others. An important characteristic of this mission is fostering state partnerships. The series of Coastal Ocean Management, Planning, and Assessment (COMPAS) products have been produced in direct collaboration with state natural resources and environmental institutions. "

All text by the respective organizations, January 2, 1997

Compilation & web design: Charles Convis, ESRI Conservation Program, April 2, 1996