Okay, good morning and thank you everyone
for watching this webinar.
Today I'm going to go over the preview of
the preliminary results from the American
Samoa Core Reef
Mapping Partization Project.
My name is Lieutenant Jen Kraus and today
I'll be presenting
what we have so far for
this project and what's in store next.
Thanks to the project team and many
participants for your
engagement, your inputs, and helping
make this project happen without your
help and engagement.
We wouldn't have the great data that we
have so we really appreciate it.
So for today's agenda, we'll first be
briefly revisiting the project's
objectives and going
in goals for anybody new
or needing a refresher.
I'll give a brief overview of the methods
used in our analysis.
Then I'll go over some of the results and
give a quick demo of
the dashboard which is
linked in the meeting description as well
as in the PowerPoint
slides which should be
shared with everyone.
If you have trouble accessing either of
these, please email me, let me know.
They should all be publicly viewable but
we want to make sure
you can access this if you
want to see.
I'll briefly, finally I'll briefly go
over what we have next
in store for this project
and final reports.
And if you have any questions or comments
or anything, please email me.
I'm happy to talk about
anything that I go over today.
So a quick review of the
goals of this multi-year project.
So we have three main objectives.
The first is to identify gaps in
bathometric data by
creating an inventory of existing
data within the project's scope.
The second objective is to identify high
priority locations of
overlapping mapping needs to
inform coral reef management.
This was done in all seven of the U.S.
coral reef jurisdictions.
And today I'm just focusing on the
results from American Samoa.
And the third objective is to identify
potential mapping projects.
This project is part of CRCP's
multidisciplinary approach to provide
necessary information
for effective coral reef
conservation and management.
So the data from this project is kind of
part of the roadmap for
future work in kind of
helping to create that narrative and
support future project planning.
So the purpose of this project and
today's webinar is to get
information to people with
CRCP being one of the many
entities with that fun mapping.
So we wanted to provide this data as it
could be useful for all
our partners, all of our
participants to see what other, what
everyone, you know, what
all their data needs are.
And the results will be considered final
once we release the
report, which will be early
in spring of 2024.
So here we have an image of the American
Samoa project area where
we asked participants to
give us their coral mapping priorities.
So this, the red line is the 40 meter
ISOBOC, which was the
depth limit for this project,
just focusing on
shallow coral reef areas.
And we used a hexagon grid, which I'll
show in a later slide,
with each grid equaling
about two and a half square kilometers.
So this grid is just where participants
input their spatial priorities.
So just a brief timeline of what we've
completed so far over on
the right, Florida, Puerto
Rico, USBI, and Hawaii
have all been completed.
We're currently working on finalizing
Guam at CNMI and then
of course American Samoa,
which we're going to talk about today.
So the data inventory and the grid then
became part of the
foundation for the prioritization
web tool to gather
coral mapping data needs.
Using a web tool, which I have shown here
on the bottom right,
participants input coins
into this grid, this hexagon
grid you see on this image.
And this just indicates when and where
data are needed for that participant.
So the more coins they put into a
specific grid, the more
urgent the data are needed.
There was a set number of coins each
participant received, which
you'll see in the table in
the middle here.
Participants were given a total of 50
coins to input into the
grid to tell us where they
need data.
And so in that table, I'm just showing
the number of total
cells, which is 160 total
number of coins, which was 50.
So that's how many coins each participant
got to input into those 150 cells.
And then the max number of coins per
cell, which was five.
And this just encouraged participants to
spread out their coins
and not put all 50 into one.
One of the goals of this project is to
look at overlapping data needs.
So we wanted to make sure that people
weren't focused
geographically to find that area.
And the number of coins that we gave each
participant was just
based solely on the number
of grid cells in each region.
So this was pretty standard across all
seven jurisdictions on
how we calculated the number
of coins.
Participants were also given a dropdown
list of selections to
indicate their intended management
use and map product requirements.
And these are input
along with their coins.
So these options just helped provide more
information as to why
data is needed in that
cell or that area in the type of data
requirements that need to be met.
And we'll help kind of guide our
discussion in the report as well.
General methods for how we
organize and visualize the data.
So first agencies input their data needs
on their own time during
a window of about seven
weeks from June to August of
this year, eventually three.
So we did this in a mix of folks did it
on their own or we
would meet and do one on one
webinars or one on one meetings with
participants to kind of go
through their priorities and
go through the web tool together.
We summarize the inputs by total number
of coins per grid cell
as well as the management
use and product requirement selection.
So we have a couple of
ways of showing the results.
And I'll show you those in later slides.
This resulted in multiple grid layers
where we can visualize
the spatial distribution
of total coins, number of coins per
management use and number of coins per
map product options.
These are just a few examples.
We have some other ones and I'll show you
those on the dashboard.
We also created a ranking layer, which
also shown in the dashboard.
So this was calculated by combining the
ranks of the total
number of coins, the number of
participants and then the number of
management uses selected.
So this is just another way to look at
the data that kind of
combine multiple aspects
of importance.
And we use that to kind of help determine
high priority areas
based on all these different
parameters instead of looking at each
results in separate layers.
Okay.
Just real quick participating groups.
We had a total of input
from nine agencies or groups.
Two of them were with fisheries, two
separate groups within fisheries.
So these, you know, just wanted to make a
shout out, huge thank
you to everyone that
participated in this project.
These are all folks play a significant
role in coral reef
management within these jurisdictions
from actually management decisions to,
you know, academia,
those folks that collect the
data and help inform
the managers as well.
So we really appreciate everyone's time
and effort to get us this information.
So into the results.
So first I wanted to go over the
selections for management use.
Again, I'll show these spatially as well
on a grid when we go to the dashboard.
But this is just kind of
how often these were chosen.
And so we asked each participant to tell
us how we use the how
they will use the data
to inform coral reef management by giving
them a list of these
management uses you see
here on this graph.
We allowed participants to input two
selections of primary and secondary.
Secondary was just optional if they saw,
you know, more than one
option that they wanted
to select for that grid cell.
They had the option to do that.
So this bar graph shows how often each
management use was selected
with the most common overall
on top.
And the overall bar is on the left.
So that's just combined
primary and secondary.
And then the other two bars are how often
primary and secondary were selected.
Looking at the overall column, the one on
the far left, you'll see
that coastal vulnerability
and planning was the most selected
management use followed by
monitoring and spatial protection
in management.
These three options alone made up almost
75% of the inputs from participants.
As an example of kind of how to interpret
primary, you know,
the other two columns we
have are primary and secondary.
You can see that although monitoring was
the second most
selected overall, it was only
selected as a primary option.
So an additional special protection in
management was mostly
selected as a secondary option.
So this is different ways to look at the
data and kind of see
how these selections were made.
And, yeah, so overall, this graph just
shows the top drivers
for mapping the needs and
shortly we'll explore how
they use display on the map.
So for map product requirements, this
tells us why people need data.
I'm sorry, this tells us what types of
requirements we met
with the new mapping data.
This ultimately helps us better
understand the resolution
and methodology needed to
fulfill these requirements.
Density of macrobota was the top selected
requirement followed
closely by identification
of coral species, which both make up over
half of the coins allocated.
So now I'm going to go over a
demonstration of the results dashboard.
We created this dashboard to hopefully
provide an interactive and
user-friendly way to view
all the results layers.
Again, this data is considered
preliminary until we get
the final report out, but this
dashboard is public so everyone can
explore the results.
You don't have to sign
into RTS Online or anything.
And we also have a few recommendations on
how to view this information.
So if you have a screen that's larger to
view it, we recommend using that.
But if you're viewing it on your laptop
with a smaller screen,
just want to point out that
there may be scroll bars, so use those to
view more text and options.
Okay, so I'm going to go to this link.
So now I'm going to go over a brief
demonstration of the results dashboard.
So we created this dashboard to hopefully
provide an interactive
and user-friendly way
to view all the results layer.
This data is considered preliminary again
until we get the
final report out, but this
dashboard is public so everyone can
explore the results.
We recommend that if you have a desktop
screen that's larger to view it on there.
But if you are viewing it on a smaller
laptop screen, just want
to point out that there may
be scroll bars, so use those to view more
text and options if
something looks cut off.
So just wanted to point out
a few quick help functions.
So at the bottom left here, there's kind
of instructions on how to
view the different layers,
and I'll go over all that, but just so
you know where some help information is.
Also down here, there's the map tab, and
next to it, there's a
help and information, which
should give you instructions on how to
use this dashboard as well.
So first I wanted to point out that this
is a very zoomed out view of the map.
That's just because we include the entire
scope of the project area, which includes
Rosatoll and Swain's Island, which are
kind of far apart, so
that's why you see it really
zoomed out.
But I'm going to go ahead and just zoom
into Tutuila here for
this demonstration, just
so it's a little bit
easier to see the grid cells.
So here we're looking at the total coins.
So this is showing all the overlapping
data needs, a summary
from all different, from
all the participating agencies.
The legend here on the right has, yeah,
that shows kind of
what you're looking at.
So top 10% is where the
most coins are allocated.
So yeah, more coins is the
darker number, darker color.
There's different
ways to filter the data.
We provided this is just a way to help
visualize so it's not as busy.
So right now we have the
overall coins layer active.
So if you wanted to just look at just the
top 10% cells, then
you can filter that out
and just show that there.
If you wanted to add the different
categories, you certainly can.
And if you want to see all of them, you
can hit the all button.
So we have many, many different layers
that you can view here.
But you can only view them when, well,
you can, yeah, you can
view different ones under
this layer, this layer list here.
So I click this button in
the top right of the map.
There's a home button, there's a legend
button, and then there's a layers button.
So right now, Total Coins is active.
In order to make it deactivate it, you
can hit this little
eyeball symbol next to a layer.
If it's got the line
through it, that means it's off.
So Total Coins was on.
That's what I just showed you.
If I want to look at summary ranks, so
again, this is the combined
highest rank of management
use, Total Coins, and number of
participants, all in one layer.
So these are just like the highest
ranking cells based on that information.
So now we're looking at this.
If you go over to the left, the filter
data, now we can use
under the ranking section.
You can also filter
through that if you want.
If you wanted to look at where Total
Coins, the highest ranking of Total
Coins, unfortunately,
you can't make them transparent to see
them on top of each other.
That's difficult, but you can
turn these layers off and on.
That's one way you can see where the
different layers overlap.
So yeah, same thing with summary rank,
different filter options there.
So the next section that I wanted to show
you is for all the
different management uses.
So this is, we have each management use
as a layer on the grid.
And so I activated the
management uses layer.
Now over here on the left, there is this
management uses click for list option.
And so I'm going to click on that, and it
has this dropdown of all
the different management
uses.
And so right now, coastal vulnerability
and Planning is active.
So that's what we see on this map.
So it's not showing all of them at once.
It's just showing one
of the management uses.
If you wanted to see where emergency
response, for example,
falls spatially on the map, then
you can select that one.
I'll choose monitoring.
That was one of the top selected ones.
So you could see where monitoring was
most selected along with the coins.
So again, the legend is just showing
where the top 10% number
of coins were allocated
with this management use also selected.
So down here in the southern part of the
island, that's where
monitoring was selected
with the most number of coins.
Just a quick note that this isn't ordered
by most commonly selected.
It's alphabetized, so I
don't want that to be confusing.
So same deal with the
map product requirements.
So I'm going to turn off management use
and turn on map product requirements.
So now I can go over to the dropdown list
and see the different
map product requirements
in where they fall spatially.
A quick note on some of these, both with
management use and map product
requirements, some of
them have only the top 10%.
So this just means that they were only
input by one agency, and
that they all contain the
same value of coins.
So they're all going to be the top 10%.
So if you're looking at where, let's say,
condition of coral
toxa was input the most,
it's all the same
because it's the same value.
Next we have requirements scale or
product spatial scale.
So for each map product requirement, we
also matched it with
kind of what type of data
resolution we would recommend collecting.
So for example, things like condition of
coral toxa or
identification of coral species would
all require a microscale level data
because it's just so
fine scale if you're looking
at individual species of coral.
So we grouped different management uses
based on the different
spatial scales or resolutions.
And so we have a microscale, a mesoscale,
which is like medium resolution, and then
a very coarse
resolution, more regional data.
So that would be like mapping data, the
symmetry kind of data stuff.
So we provided that as
three layers here as well.
If you wanted to see where more regional
type data can be
collected or is requested
in these areas with the red cells.
So last couple of data
layers is number of requirements.
So this is just one layer.
So this is just showing cells where there
was more different
types of mapping of product
requirements selected.
So for example, the cell that I selected
here had six different product
requirements selected
for it.
So any data, for example, data collected
in these areas would
hopefully cover a variety
of different uses.
So the next one is number of management
uses, kind of the same thing.
This is where there was selected, say,
for example, in the
cell, five different types
of management uses were selected.
So any data collected in this area would
hopefully cover many
different agency data management
requirements.
And then number of participating groups.
So you can go to see a pattern of areas
that had lots of coins, a
lot of different, a high
number of participating groups,
management uses and that kind
of stuff, which makes sense.
So again, in the center part of the
islands, any data
collected there could potentially
help up to, if I click on one of these
cells, four different
participating groups who were
interested in this area.
So that's just one way
to interpret the data.
Last but not least, we also
included the background data.
So this is the mapping inventory.
I spoke to earlier as one of our
objectives of this project
was to collect any existing
bathymetric data, display of the zenof
footprints so you can see
spatially where your data needs
are and where there's existing data, if
it's outdated and things like that.
So all that is in here, you'll be able to
turn on if you want to
see some of the things
like plans are planned for this year or
were collected, but we
don't have the footprints
for it yet.
So, but we wanted to include it in here,
even though it's a pretty
broad like planned area.
It's not where the
actual data was collected.
We still wanted to put it in here as more
of an awareness as well.
And then there's
footprints of existing data as well.
Multibeam surveys and some information on
kind of where those exist.
We have some habitat maps, existing
habitat maps as well.
So you can turn those on
and those will show up.
So yeah, you can see, you know, good,
good near shore habitat
map, but it's from 2005.
So definitely can use a more updated
habitat map for that island.
And then just some just general
boundaries, if that's helpful for for
management planning.
So, so yeah, these are just data layers
that we thought could be
helpful for folks to use.
Just want to have
everything in one place.
And then we obviously wanted to include
it in the results
because they, you know, were
provided to help.
And so you can see what was provided to
participants when you look
at this data and you know what
they had and it could
help kind of interpret it.
Okay, so just just a quick, you know,
kind of last thoughts on this data.
So again, I have the
overall points on here.
This is usually one layer that a lot of
people will use this in
the summary rank, I think
are the good snapshot of
where mapping data needs.
So yeah, you can see here there's a lot
of areas that are deemed high priority.
There's a lot of red
and dark red cells here.
But obviously, no, I
can't map all of these areas.
But what is important is to continue
collaborating with partners
to keep each other up to date
on new mapping efforts, data coming in,
so that together we can
get these areas mapped
and you know, obviously avoiding
duplicating efforts and
allocating resources in a way
that makes sense.
So that's really all I
want to show for the demo.
Please do check it out.
Let us know if you run into any issues,
questions or any suggestions for
improvements as well.
We definitely want this to be a user
friendly way to view
all the different results.
So now I'll go back to the slides real
quick and finish this out.
OK, so as I mentioned, the dashboard is
public for everyone to view.
The data is considered preliminary until
we're able to finalize
everything and release the report.
We're hoping to get the
report released in March of 2024.
And of course, I'll
share that with everyone.
The email once it's published online onto
the NOAA repository.
This report will include additional
narrative information on
areas of high ranking need,
which will be reaching out to many of the
participants for additional feedback,
thoughts on the results, and that's all
information that we like to use to build
the narrative of where
we're mapping data needs are.
We're not the experts you guys are.
So we definitely look to you to help
provide information on the results of
this and of these data we collected.
You can view results from completed
jurisdictions by
visiting our project page.
So I will just demo that really quickly.
So here's the results page for our
prioritization project.
I'm actually going to go to the home page
really quick because this is what you'll
see when you pull this link up.
So just general background
information on this page.
We have a link at the top.
There's a bar with you can go to where
all the mapping inventories are for all
the different jurisdictions.
So American Samoa is the
first one you'll see here.
And it's the same background information
that's in the dashboard.
We just have it here as well.
And you can scroll down and see the same
for Guam and CNMI and then all the other
jurisdictions are below.
So everything is here on this one page.
And then the results page.
This is where we're going to link
everything to have it all in one place.
So American Samoa results.
You can go online and download the data
as well if you wanted to view it on your
own personal platforms.
You can also view the
dashboard from this link.
And then once we get the report published
online, we'll have a
link to that here as well.
You're seeing for Guam and CNMI can be
the results in the
dashboard for those jurisdictions.
And then, yeah, this is what it looked
like when we're all done.
You'll have a link to read the report,
which will if you click on that, it'll
take you to the PDF.
So it will be a NOAA
technical memorandum.
And yeah, it's a lot
of good stuff in there.
Yeah, so please visit our project page.
And again, let us know
if you have any questions.
And yeah, just a
couple of closing remarks.
This project is meant to just gather
data, which is often just a snapshot in
time of what the current data needs are.
So it's possible that this information
gets used one or two years down the line.
But just keep that in mind that there
might be new data out at that point.
There's always new data being collected
that we just can't capture.
We're not continuously
adding to our inventories.
We know this project is ending soon.
So we're not keeping up the inventory.
But that's why we wanted to provide it as
like, here's a snapshot of what was going
on at that time and what we
provided our participants.
Moving forward, we do encourage everyone
that uses this data to just use this as a
starting point for future collaborations.
And yeah, of course, if
again, link to our hub.
If you have any questions, everything
should be there, including this webinar,
we'll link it in the hub as well.
And of course, please continue to reach
out if you have any
questions or comments.
Happy to discuss anything.
Thank you.