Linking natural hazard risk assessment and community planning using a framework called Pathways-DM, which integrates CommunityViz, HAZUS-MH, and LUPM as well as other tools.
Officials in the Town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, were concerned about the aesthetic and natural-resource impacts of an increasing number of docks on Green Pond. They wanted a tool that would allow them to illustrate dock and pier build-out under the existing regulations.
Increased population growth in coastal areas can result in pollution, habitat loss and degradation, overfishing, invasive species, and increased threats due to coastal hazards. Understanding the linkages between land use strategies and their effects on coastal-marine ecosystems is critical to the development of sound land use policies that minimize impacts from population growth and maintain the social, economic, and ecological values of our coasts.
Location:
Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), TX
Coastal and estuarine habitats in the Northeast are being significantly impacted by a rapid rate of population growth and an ever-accelerating change in land use composition.
The WEAP model is set up to accept physical impact relationships and economic valuation of changes in those relationships. These features are being used to estimate potential values for changes in the ecosystem from changes in water management in an application developed for the Town of Sharon, Massachusetts.
The Nature Conservancy and partners at NOAA Fisheries, University of British Columbia and the University of Queensland have prepared a case study from the Pacific Northwest Coast that examines approaches and methods for linking biodiversity conservation and fishery production objectives within one spatial planning framework.
This website features case studies that illustrate different approaches to marine ecosystem-based management (EBM) around the world. They are geared towards practitioners and policymakers and show how managers, scientists, communities, NGOs and resource users are advancing EBM in varied geographic and political settings.
Location:
USA, the Caribbean, the western Pacific, northern Europe, Africa, Mexico and Canada,
Since 2005, the MarineMap Consortium, consisting of scientists and technologists at the University of California Santa Barbara, Ecotrust and The Nature Conservancy, have developed web-based decision support tools for stakeholders to visualize and analyze geospatial information pertaining to the ocean.
The Nature Conservancy and partners at NOAA Coastal Services Center and the University of Queensland have prepared a case study from the Florida Panhandle that examines approaches for jointly meeting objectives in biodiversity conservation and coastal hazard mitigation.
The project involved collaboration between state and federal agencies, several non-profit organizations, and the local communities (including local governments) to develop land use and other policies based on an understanding of the linkages between land use effects on specific coastal-marine ecosystems.
Location:
Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve and Aransas County, on the Gulf Coast of Texas near Corpus Christi, TX
The Multipurpose Marine Cadastre (MMC) is a multi-agency effort to build a GIS-based marine information system for U.S. waters that provides authoritative geospatial data, web-based mapping tools, and supporting information to inform decision making on a range of ocean issues.
The North West Shelf Joint Environmental Management Study was a marine environmental study of the North West Shelf jointly funded by CSIRO and the Western Australian Government.