Duke's seamapping dream team
Computer savvy ecologists at Duke are taking spatial analysis
offshore as part of a worldwide effort to take stock of what
lives in the sea p.2
The Duke project springs out of a larger, international effort
called the Census of Marine Life (CoML). The name says it
all: over the next 10 years marine scientists all over the
world will be collecting and analyzing information on virtually
every creature that lives in the sea. In order to do that,
the Census is subdivided into several components, with the
information piece known as “The Ocean Biogeographic
Information System (OBIS)”. This Internet-based system
is envisioned as a place where researchers can share data,
explore the origins of marine biodiversity and figure out
ways to protect it. To do that, OBIS will offer species and
habitat level databases along with spatial query tools for
visualizing relationships between sea creatures and their
environment.
The Duke team will be setting up one of the nodes in this
system. Other OBIS partners include University of Kansas hexacoral
researchers and the University of Texas team that collects
data on octopus, squid, and other cephalopods. Teams also
hail from Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Duke was poised to play a role in OBIS, and Halpin is not
afraid to admit that they’ve assembled a sea mapping
dream team.
“I’ve got a lab in Durham with very high end
computer technicians who are building the information systems
and Web sites,” he said. “My colleagues in Beaufort
are people who have been working for years with marine mammals,
seabirds and sea turtles. They can call up their colleagues
and say ‘I know you have this data set of turtles in
the South Pacific. Would you like us to help you publish it
on our OBIS Web site? ‘‘
After much debate, the team came up with a tortured title
that makes for an apt acronym: “Spatial Ecological Analysis
of Megavertibrate Animal Populations” or SEAMAP. They
spent their first year building the digital infrastructure.
Now, the data is coming on line. By mid summer, a click on
the OBIS-SEAMAP Web page found 10 datasets comprising 11,753
records collected between 1992 to 2003. The main page offers
links to data search, mapping, and species profiles. Anyone
can peruse it, but data contributors will have higher access.
Using a password, they will be able to upload and edit data.
The data catalogue offers a simple view, while data search
uses a live-access server map applet to allow a user to request
temporally or spatially explicit databases.
One click takes you to maps with data points tracking the
movement of whales and dolphins off the U.S Atlantic coast
— thank you National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
And anyone who wants to use Andy Read’s near real-time
data on loggerhead, green and Kemp’s Ridley turtles
tagged off the North Carolina will find it here. Satellite
tags on three turtle species will feed regular updates to
the site. Ultimately the data will be used to look at the
relationship of turtle movement to fishing effort, observed
turtle takes, turtle stranding, and habitat. Two of the databases
cover birds, including 657 records Hyrenbach collected from
tagged albatross while working on his doctoral theses at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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