GeoConnections is pleased to announce the availability of the recently completed Data Needs Assessment for Integrated Land Management (ILM) Decision-Making Processes.Developed in close consultation with four active ILM projects located across Canada, the data needs assessment:
Analyzes the role of geospatial data and information in ILM decision-making processes
Identifies geospatial datasets used to support ILM decision-making processes and describes its transformation into meaningful information
Identifies and prioritizes new geospatial data sets as needed to support and enhance ILM decision-making processes
Identifies barriers to accessing, using and sharing key geospatial data sets
Identifies opportunities for overcoming identified barriers
To view, please link to the Key Documents section of the GeoConnections web site.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Institute for Ocean Sciences
Come learn about our ocean at Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, BC on July 16 & 17. This is an excellent opportunity to learn from scientists about ocean acidification, marine geology of the Salish Sea, climate change, seismic whale songs and much more. This 2-day public event is free!
The schedule of events is as follows:
Wednesday, June 16
9:00 Ocean acidification, marine ecosystems, and geoengineering our climate – Ken Denman
10:00 Climate Change in the Strait of Georgia – Sophia Johannessen
11:00 Satellite views of BCs coastal waters – Jim Gower
12:00 LUNCH – barbeque available in cafeteria, as well as regular menu
1:00 Weapons of Mass Spectrometry: tracking chemicals in marine ecosystems – Andrew Ross
2:00 Charting the BC coast: looking back and looking ahead – Dave Prince
3:00 Earthquakes in our region: what to expect – Alison Bird
Thursday, June 17
9:00 Seismic whale songs: unexpected results from the Neptune Canada network – Taimi Mulder
10:00 Tracking Sea level history in the Georgia Basin – Stephane Mazzotti
11:00 Marine Geology of the Salish Sea: understanding seafloor features of the Strait of Georgia – Kim Conway
12:00 LUNCH – regular menu
1:00 Life in an ice camp: the challenge of work in the Canadian Arctic – George Schlagintweit
2:00 Exploring the BC coast: seabed and water column surveying – Rob Hare
The event is located at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC. (Near the Airport, on Patricia Bay).
Registration is strongly encouraged, but not mandatory. It is helpful if you indicate if you will want to order lunch and/or barbeque. This is not a commitment on your part, but will help the organizers plan.
Contact Terry Curran, P.Eng. to reserve your spot:
Fisheries and Oceans Canada | Pêches et Océans Canada
9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC V8L 4B2 [email protected]
Telephone | Téléphone 250.363.6583
Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada Read more “Ocean Discovery Days at IOS – FREE”→
GeoWeb 2010 is a conference targeting senior decision-makers, industry leaders and technologists that are interested in the convergence of web technologies, XML, web services and GIS.
GeoWeb 2010 is taking place July 26-30, 2010 in beautiful downtown Vancouver, BC Canada at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue.
This year’s focus at the conference is on “Going Real Time and the technologies for information sharing and collaboration respecting events in the real world.”
Early bird registration ends July 19, 2010.
You will be interested in this conference if you are interested in:
– the development of new GeoWeb technology
– the impact of the GeoWeb on businesses and government policies
– the emergence of new business models for the GeoWeb
– the multitude of applications associate with the new GeoWeb technology
The debate about farmed salmon in Canada rages on between environmentalists, wild salmon fishers and the salmon farmers themselves.
The Globe and Mail’s June 2010 Report on Business presents some interesting statistics on aquaculture that should be considered when making management decisions on our coast. Further, one could conclude from the numbers they present about the sheer size of the aquaculture industry (and the potential for affecting and being affected by other marine industries) that a comprehensive marine plan is needed on the coast to ensure that various industries and marine uses are considered concurrently to ensure the most efficient and equitable use of our valuable marine resources.
Valerie Mucciarelli, a M.Sc. student at UVic, will be speaking about her reefball research on Tuesday June 1st 6:30pm at the Ogden Point Dive Centre in Victoria. Reefballs are concrete spheres with spaces for fish and other marine species’ habitat, and are creating an artificial reef off the Ogden Point breakwater. Val is tracking the changes in community structure in this new reef.
Also at Ogden Point, the breakwater scuba cleanup is happening on May 30th at 10am, with a bbq to follow.
While many conservationists have been understandably focussing their efforts to protect the marine environment, few have given much thought to how they will be enforced. Likewise, policing is somehow not as catchy politically as a new MPA announcement. Perhaps it has simply been assumed that it is all under control.
In reality, surveillance and enforcement agencies find themselves with increasingly large and remote areas to be protected, often with reduced resources. The report below outlines some of the new and emerging technologies to keep track of what is happening on the water.
When we arranged the expert workshop on this topic, there was some initial distrust. The “cops” weren’t used to the attention, and weren’t used to talking to scientists and conservation advocates. But the ice soon thawed, and we all found that we had a lot more in common that we might have thought. Lawlessness and irresponsible behaviour on the seas hurt the law abiding, and us all.
The topic of SERMA does not stop at technical options, and will require still more work, looking into topics such as the overlap between environmental monitoring and human surveillance; enforcement considerations, and other approaches to encouraging compliance in remote locations. We are currently seeking funding to support these complementary topics and any suggestions are welcome!
The importance of marine and coastal ecosystems for critical ecosystem services such as coastal protection, waste processing, food security, and carbon sequestration, is becoming ever more apparent. However, our quantitative knowledge of these contributions is heavily limited by a lack of baseline data. Such data are typically unavailable as consolidated global datasets, and are instead geographically dispersed and unorganised.
To address these challenges, the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is convening a Global Data Partnership for Critical Marine and Coastal Ecosystems, a network of agencies, institutions and individuals working together to develop, collate, maintain and deliver high resolution, datasets (distributed, where necessary and/or appropriate) that are critical to a range of contemporary assessments, analyses and processes.
This Global Data Partnership is a contribution to the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO-BON), and in support of various multilateral environmental agreements, including the Convention on Biological Diversity. As such the process will be fully inclusive and transparent. If you have comments or feedback, or would like to contribute or participate, please contact Louisa Wood ([email protected]) by 15th June 2010. An initial teleconference will be planned for later in the year.
The Ocean Renewable Energy Group (OREG) aligns industry, academia and government to ensure that Canada is a leader in providing ocean energy solutions to a world market.
Their 2010 conference will be on October 27th and 28th in Vancouver.
Community open houses will also be held in Ucluelet on June 1 and Campbell River on June 2. More information.
Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo is advertising a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Ecosystem Based Management. Read more about this opportunity here.
GeoConnections is pleased to announce the availability of the recently completed Data Needs Assessment for Integrated Land Management (ILM) Decision-Making Processes. Developed in close consultation with four active ILM projects located across Canada, the data needs assessment:
