2008 Tool Demonstrations Available

Atlantis | Communities at Sea Mapper | e-Participation | EBM Tools Awareness #1 | EBM Tools Awareness Webinar #2 | Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) | Fishery Analyst | InVEST | InVitro | Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools (MGET) | Marine Reserves and Local Fisheries Interactive Simulation | Marxan | Models in support of decision making: deliberative effectiveness, explanatory effectiveness, and policy relevance of models in natural resources management. Case studies in the Laurentian Great Lakes | Restoration Prioritization Toolset   

New Marxan Users Manual, Marxan Developments, and More by Jeff Ardron of the Pacific Marine Analysis and Research Organization (PacMARA) and Hugh Possingham of The University of Queensland (February 12, 2008).  PacMARA and the University of Queensland have written an enhanced user's manual for the Marxan decision support tool.  Marxan is freeware used by over 1100 registered users from 600 organizations (government, academia and NGOs) in 95 countries as a decision support tool to consider options in terrestrial and marine reserve design. It is perhaps the most popular "site selection optimisation" software available and is widely published.  Previous documentation was a mixture of mathematical theory and technical input data requirements and did not fully meet the needs of all tool users. The new manual will facilitate understanding of the core software and will be translated into Spanish.  More information about the project and downloads of the Powerpoint presentation and an audio recording of the presentation can be found here.

Overview of e-Participation Techniques by Chris Haller of PlaceMatters (March 6, 2008).  e-Participation is the use of information and communication technologies to broaden and deepen political participation by enabling citizens to connect with one another and with public leaders.  This demonstration will give an overview of a variety of e-Participation techniques and services that PlaceMatters offers including interactive project websites, keypad polling systems, community mapping exercises, web mapping tools, on-line brainstorming, and on-line dialogues.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

EBM Tools Awareness Webinar by Dan Dorfman, the EBM Tools Network Training Coordinator (March 25, 2008).  A variety of software tools have been developed to help policymakers and managers implement EBM processes such as collecting, visualizing, and analyzing information about ecosystems and human communities and engaging stakeholders in EBM decision making processes. This webinar provided an overview of tools that can be used to facilitate EBM processes in coastal and marine environments and their watersheds, provide brief descriptions of projects which have used these tools, and point managers in the direction of additional resources to find out more about tools. Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Overview of Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) and Ecoseed Project by Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia (March 26, 2008).  EwE is a free ecological/ecosystem modeling software suite.  It can be used to address ecological questions; evaluate ecosystem effects of fishing; explore management policy options; analyze impact and placement of marine protected areas; predict movement and accumulation of contaminants and tracers (Ecotracer); and model effect of environmental changes. This presentation will provide an overview of the latest version of EwE and describe a new zoning tool, Ecoseed, that is being developed for the EwE software package through the MEBM Tool Innovation Fund.  Ecoseed is designed to evaluate placement of protected areas.  Learn more about Ecopath with Ecosim.  More information about the Ecoseed project and downloads of the Powerpoint presentation and an audio recording of the presentation can be found here.

Demonstration of the Restoration Prioritization Toolset (April 10, 2008) by Chaeli Judd of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  The Restoration Prioritization Toolset is a GIS based decision support tool used to help prioritize restoration management activities within an area of interest. The toolset is focused on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and comprised of three models: Controlling Factors, Benthic Change and Prioritization. Each element analyzes one of the components of an an ecological conceptual model, uses local and satellite products, and provides feedback to the user based on that component. The toolset is available both through an on-line implementation and as ArcGIS toolboxes. Currently the online version is configured for Mobile Bay, AL.  Learn more about the Restoration Prioritization Toolset. Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Demonstration of the Marine Reserves and Local Fisheries Interactive Simulation by Dan Brumbaugh of the American Museum of Natural History (May 15, 2008).  This simulation-based education tool allows users to experiment with the use of marine reserves as tools in fisheries management and to explore various biological and economic factors that influence population viability and fisheries sustainability.  Focusing on key Caribbean fisheries species, their habitat preferences, the distribution of these habitats across the seascape, economic costs and proceeds from small-scale fisheries, and simple models of fishing behavior, the simulation provides an easy to use but flexible platform for visualizing and exploring multiple ecological and human dimensions of fisheries management and marine reserve design.  Learn more about the simulation.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Presentation about Communities at Sea Mapper by Kevin St. Martin of Rutgers University (May 29, 2008).  A key difficulty in EBM is directly integrating human communities into the marine environment and management.  These difficulties are largely a result of the lack of data specifying those areas at sea that are utilized by communities of resource users even as the marine environment is increasingly understood in spatial terms.  This presentation will describe the background research for and a tool currently under development- Community at Sea Mapper- that will link port communities to resource areas.  Community at Sea Mapper (still under development) will facilitate two basic functions. The first function will link port communities (as defined by the end user) to resource areas. The second function will link specific resource areas (defined by the end user) to particular port communities.  The tool will facilitate the creation of maps depicting the resource areas upon which coastal communities depend and it will work to enhance impact analyses of area-based management initiatives.  Since the Community at Sea Mapper tool is still under development, this presentation will focus on Dr. St. Martin's research on New Engand fishing communities informing the tool functionality.  A demonstration of the tool functionality will be held at a later date after the tool is completed.  Funding for development of Community at Sea Mapper is being provided by the Duke-Packard Marine EBM Tool Innovation Fund.  For more information about the tool being developed and Dr. St. Martin's research, see http://mgel.env.duke.edu/proj/mebm/funded-projects/communities/index_html and http://geography.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/stmartin/research.html.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Demonstration of InVEST by Heather Tallis of the Natural Capital Project (June 12, 2008).  Government officials, conservation professionals, farmers, and other land owners make decisions about how to use their land all the time. Yet, never before have any of these groups had a systematic way to demonstrate the future costs and benefits of their decisions for people and the environment. In its most ground-breaking effort, the Natural Capital Project aims to meet this challenge with InVEST, a new tool that can model and map the delivery, distribution, and economic value of life-support systems (ecosystem services), well into the future. The tool will help users visualize the impacts of potential decisions, identifying tradeoffs and compatibilities between environmental, economic, and social benefits.  Learn more about InVEST.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Presentation of "Models in support of decision making: deliberative effectiveness, explanatory effectiveness, and policy relevance of models in natural resources management. Case studies in the Laurentian Great Lakes" by Emily Therese Cloyd from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office (June 24, 2008).  This study focused on how participants experienced the process of using models to support policy decisions and what their experiences suggest for designing future processes. We analyzed four cases in which computer simulation models served as decision support tools, all drawn from the Laurentian Great Lakes.  For each case, we assessed how models have been used in decision making, their strengths and weaknesses as decision tools, the ways they have enhanced or undermined decision processes, and ways their development and use could be improved. We conducted in-depth interviews with modelers, managers, decision-makers, and stakeholders and drew on scientific and technical literature related to each case in order to understand the "success" of models as decision support tools in three areas: (1) deliberative effectiveness (fostering communication among participants); (2) explanatory effectiveness (achieving a shared understanding of the problem and solutions); and (3) policy relevance (relevant to the actual policy decisions being made).  Download the full report (JP Manno, R Smardon, JV DePinto, ET Cloyd, and SM Del Granado. 2008 The use of models in Great Lakes decision making: an interdisciplinary synthesis. Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute: Syracuse, NY. Occasional Paper 16. 95 pp.) at www.esf.edu/es/documents/GreatLakesRpt.pdf.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

EBM Tools Awareness Webinar by Dan Dorfman of Intelligent Marine Planning (September 16, 2008).  This webinar will provides an overview of recently-developed technology tools and methods for facilitating Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) of coral reef ecosystems.   In particular, it focuses on tools and methods that can help resource managers and policymakers collect, visualize, analyze, and integrate diverse types of information (such as information on the coral reef ecosystem and human communities that depend on it); provide decision support for common coral reef conservation, restoration, and resource management decisions; and help engage communities and stakeholders in the decision making process.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio recording.

Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools (MGET) Demonstration by Jason Roberts of Duke University (October 15, 2008). MGET, also known as the GeoEco Python package, is an open source geoprocessing toolbox designed for coastal and marine researchers and GIS analysts who .with spatially-explicit ecological and oceanographic data in scientific or management workflows. MGET includes over 150 tools useful for a variety of tasks, such as converting oceanographic data to ArcGIS formats, identifying oceanographic features (e.g. SST fronts), fitting and evaluating statistical models such as GAMs and GLMs by automatically interfacing ArcGIS with the R statistics program, analyzing coral reef connectivity by simulating larval dispersal, and building grids that summarize fishing effort, CPUE and other statistics. MGET may be accessed from ArcGIS as a toolbox in the ArcToolbox window and from programming languages as a set of Python modules and COM Automation components. This demonstration will illustrate a few of the most popular tools in the MGET package by building and evaluating a presence/absence habitat model. Learn more about MGET.  Download the Powerpoint presentation and audio and video recording of the presentation here.

Presentation on Management Strategy Evaluation Tools (Atlantis and InVitro) by Beth Fulton of CSIRO (November 12, 2008).  Management strategy evaluation (MSE) involves assessing the consequences of a range of management strategies or options and presenting the results in a way which lays bare the tradeoffs in performance across a range of management objectives. In contrast to some previous approaches to fisheries assessment, it does not seek to proscribe an optimal strategy or decision. Instead it seeks to provide the decision maker with the information on which to base a rational decision, given their own objectives, preferences, and attitudes to risk.  MSE is a simulation technique based on modelling each part of the adaptive management cycle. This presentation will feature two MSE tools developed by researchers at CSIRO: Atlantis, a deterministic biogeochemical whole of ecosystem model for the marine environment, and InVitro, an agent based ecosystem-level management strategy evaluation modelling framework for marine environments.  Learn more about MSE, Atlantis, and InVitro.  Download the Powerpoint presentation, or a recording of the presentation [Windows Media .wmv format].  If you are unable to download the recording, please contact us.

Demonstration of Fishery Analyst by Francesca Riolo of Mappamondo GIS (December 10, 2008).  Fishery Analyst is an ArcGIS 9.x application to analyze and visualize temporal and spatial patterns of fishery dynamics. The main functions are quantitative estimation and visualization of catch and effort and their variation in space and time, analysis of fishing vessel utilization, data quality control, and deriving information on the location of important economic and threatened species. The application provides a user-friendly analysis interface allowing for easy and diverse output production. The interface allows the user to choose the analysis to perform (effort, catch density, catch per unit of effort etc) and to select data on criteria such as year, vessel name and/or size, and fish species caught.  Learn more about Fishery Analyst.   Download the recording of the presentation [Windows Media .wmv format].  If you are unable to download the recording, please contact us.