How Data is Turned into a Marine Feature

Features are the natural or human elements that are mapped and included in site selection (Marxan) analyses by the BCMCA. These include broad ecological units, species, habitats, and areas of ecological or human use identified through the ecological expert workshops held by the BCMCA or through discussions with the marine user community.

For each feature identified, experts are asked to specify data sets that could inform the creation of a province-wide spatial representation of the feature. Then, one by one, data sets are requested, assembled and sharing constraints are recorded.  Often multiple data sets are combined to create a feature. Experts who recommended the feature and the data providers are then invited to review the spatial representation of the feature. Once suggested revisions are complete the BCMCA will publish the feature as a map, as metadata and as a downloadable GIS data layer (where permissible through data sharing agreements).

Through an example of pelagic bird data gathered by the Laskeek Bay Conservation Society, we can see how the BCMCA work process turns data into a published feature.

Laskeek Bay Conservation Society (LBCS) has been active in conservation work on Haida Gwaii for 20 years.  The LBCS provide volunteer and educational opportunities for people to help conserve the marine and terrestrial ecosystems in and around Laskeek Bay (http://www.laskeekbay.org/). Since 1990 the LBCS has been surveying the abundance and distribution of different marine birds in the same area off the east coast of Haida Gwaii, following a series of transects by boat. Each transect was surveyed numerous times annually, from 2001 to 2008, and the number of birds of each different species was recorded. Through a data sharing agreement between BCMCA and LBCS, these bird counts and transect locations were delivered to BCMCA.

Seabird experts recommended that the BCMCA draft pelagic seabird features that illustrate distribution in terms of densities or birds per square kilometer. To create density values for BCMCA planning units from the data provided, we summarized the bird counts by category for each transect, calculated densities based on the length and width of the transects, and attributed these values to the midpoint of the transect. These density values were weighted by survey effort and combined into the BCMCA planning units with data from at-sea surveys performed by other organizations, including the Canadian Wildlife Service and Parks Canada.

This work led to the creation of four features recommended by the pelagic seabird experts at the BCMCA Seabird Workshop in 2006.  These final features include:

1. pelagic seabird density,
2. listed species density (i.e., species listed as threatened or endangered either nationally or globally),
3. marbled murrelet density,
4. pelagic species diversity (i.e., species richness or number of different species observed in each planning unit).

These and other features will be available this winter in the BCMCA data repository.

Spatial Socioeconomic Data as a Cost in Systematic Marine Conservation Planning

BCMCA Project Team member Natalie Ban has coauthored a review entitled, “Spatial socioeconomic data as a cost in systematic marine conservation planning.”

In summary: Generally, when planning for conservation, both planners and scientists have focused on biological benefits. There is recognition that the socioeconomic costs of conservation must be incorporated. Here, “cost” is intended to reflect the socioeconomic impacts of conservation areas. By explicitly incorporating socioeconomic costs into systematic marine conservation planning, costly conservation mistakes can be avoided.

There are several decision support tools to aid this input. One of them is Marxan, which the BCMCA will be using to develop conservation scenarios. Marxan is a decision support tool only and it’s outputs would be a basis for conservation discussions, not to provide or suggest conservation areas that should be accepted.

Including socioeconomic costs into conservation planning can reduce conflicts between resource users and conservationists. As well, incorporating socioeconomic costs up front produces plans that are cost-effective to implement and manage.

The review summarizes the costs of marine conservation, reviews how these costs have been used in conservation planning, and discusses future research priorities to address shortcomings of current approaches.

Natalie Ban is a Post Doctoral Fellow – Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University – Australia. This review was instigated as part of the British Columbia Marine Conservation Analysis (BCMCA) project. Click here to see the review paper.

BCMCA Invited to Provide Expertise to DFO National

The BCMCA has spent significant effort to balance the ecological and human use components of the project. In doing so, we have broken new ground and developed tools and techniques of interest to other jurisdictions. BCMCA’s workshop held last year to map renewable ocean energy interests sparked awareness of our project at DFO’s National headquarters. When they were thinking of speakers for a special session on examining methods for identifying social, cultural and economic values in support of Integrated Oceans Management they asked the BCMCA. Dave Nicolson, our project manager, will represent the BCMCA with a 40 minute discussion on “Generating information to support integrated marine planning: advantages and challenges of a collaborative approach”.

This session is to be held in conjunction with the Ocean Management Research Network (OMRN) meeting being held in Ottawa Oct 21-24, where the BCMCA will also be presenting our work and lessons learned . Our presentation at the OMRN is the latest in a series of presentations the BCMCA has made to a variety of audiences provincially, nationally and internationally. We plan to create a page on the BCMCA website that lists where we have presented the project over the past years.

Communicating BCMCA’s Uniqueness

The BCMCA is an encouraging example of multi-sector collaboration. We have busily been assembling data that can be used to assist with marine planning. As we move closer to the development of our final products, we are making attempts to communicate our work.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Glen Jamieson, semi retired Research Scientist, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Pacific Biological Station will present the work of the BCMCA in Korea at the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) annual meeting this October. Dr Jamieson has 29 years experience with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, including 5 years in the Canadian Maritimes on scallops and 13 years as Head, Shellfish Stock Assessment at Nanaimo.

PICES, an intergovernmental scientific organization, was established in 1992 to promote and coordinate marine research in the North Pacific and adjacent seas. Its present members are Canada, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. For more information on the PICES meeting please visit: http://www.pices.int/meetings/annual/PICES-2009/2009-background.aspx

Best Possible Ecological Data

The BCMCA is undergoing a formal data review and verification process for the plant, bird, and physical ecological data sets obtained.

The review is a part of our effort to obtain, use and document the best data available in order to assist marine planning processes on the BC coast. In 2006 and 2007 the BCMCA hosted workshops where scientists and resource managers provided expert opinion about how to best represent marine species and habitat (collectively called marine features) for a series of exploratory analyses using Marxan.

A key component of the workshop was having the experts identify spatial datasets that could represent the marine features on a coast-wide basis. We then went about the task of requesting the data from the scientists and agencies that held it this involved entering into data sharing agreements with numerous agencies as well as researching who had data that could be included, and in some cases creating or updating GIS data layers. We had much better success obtaining bird, plant and physical data than we have had with marine mammal, fish, and invertebrate data, so we have not initiated a review of these datasets yet.

Next the data were used to create visual representations in the form of maps.  Often several datasets were merged to create a comprehensive picture of some marine feature for our whole coast. In general, we have grouped the ecological data into six categories – marine plants, seabirds, physical characteristics, invertebrates, marine mammals and fish. We expect to be compiling review feedback through October.

The data review will ensure that the best available data is used to develop our final products – the Marxan analysis and an atlas of maps.

Communicating the BCMCA Project

I am very pleased to join the BCMCA team as the Communication/Project Assistant.  I will be assisting with communications projects including the development of the BCMCA website.  As the project creates the  final products I will be making them available online and helping to create a digital legacy of the BCMCA, its work and products.

I come to this work from the past year as the marine planning communications coordinator for Living Oceans Society. I helped develop the online game coastalfling.com – a digital tool we used to help inform central and north coast residents about the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (PNCIMA).  I also assisted with communications and media relations for Living Oceans Society’s – Finding Coral Expedition.

I have been working as a writer and have been involved in web development and website projects for over 10 years. When I am not at a computer I am out enjoying the BC outdoors on the water, in the mountains or on my trusty bike.

– James Gates

Who is Rick Page?

I’ve been working in British Columbia for almost 30 years on natural resource management issues and am extremely pleased to join the BC Marine Conservation Analysis team as the new Human Use Project Coordinator.

Neil Davis did an excellent job and has accepted a new challenge with the federal government, but he has offered to help me through the transition. Thank you, Neil, for all your contributions to this project.

I am Registered Professional Biologist with training in wildlife ecology and forestry and have worked with governments from municipal to federal across Canada and the US, as well as industry and non-government environmental groups. One of my greatest challenges was working on the Commission on Resources and Environment to build a consensus land use plan for the Cariboo-Chilcotin. I also was a negotiator with the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation on the Tsawwassen Final Agreement and both of those activities provide me with some wonderful experiences that I can bring to the BCMCA.

After 15 years with the BC government, I’ve been self-employed for the last decade. Most of my career has been in applied research (I’ve taught Conservation Biology at UVIC) but my research has always focused on finding solutions. I know more than I should know about computer programming and the guts of GIS, but I’m a biologist after all and use the computer as a tool, not as a way of life. I’m also an active outdoorsman, who enjoys fresh and saltwater fly fishing and am building a new saltwater fly rod.

BCMCA Convenes Human Use Data Working Group

The BCMCA Human Use Data Working Group, a committee of user group representatives, convened in November 08 and again in early February 09 to begin providing advice and recommendations to the BCMCA Project Team about the human use component of the BCMCA. The Working Group was formed in response to the interest expressed by user groups over the past 10 months about further involvement in the BCMCA. It is lead by an independent facilitator and designed to be broadly representative of marine user groups, though its members are not expected to represent a constituency in any formal capacity.

Two representatives have been invited from each of the six human use sectors that the BCMCA has identified: commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, shipping and marine transportation, energy, marine and foreshore tenures, and recreation and tourism. Two of the Working Group representatives —with the support of the Working Group — also participate on the BCMCA Project Team. This helps ensure the project’s commitment to inclusivity and facilitates communication between the Project Team and the Working Group.

The Working Group provides an opportunity for inter-sectoral dialogue and strategic input to the BCMCA project. Its focus will be the use of human use data in Marxan analyses. In these ways, it is intended to complement the BCMCA’s more specific engagement efforts and data reviews with individual user groups, which are ongoing.

Ecological Data Assembly and Preparation Continues

Five ecological expert workshops focused on marine birds, marine plants, fishes, marine invertebrates, and marine mammals are complete and the Project Team is assembling data from expert-recommended sources.

A total of 248 datasets have been recommended and the BCMCA Project Team is contacting all data custodians to assess availability and obtain these data. More than 150 of these have either been obtained, or are unavailable, or were deemed inappropriate upon closer examination. Some recommended data sets that were not in spatial format and represented small spatial extents were deemed inappropriate due to the amount of work required to digitise them. In some cases however the BCMCA has provided resources to digitise more spatially comprehensive datasets and datasets to inform features that would otherwise be data gaps.

Available seabird and marine plant data sets have mostly been received, and pre-processing of these data to develop feature layers is nearing completion by qualified GIS contractors. Some ecological data sets recommended at expert workshops are still being requested. Ecological data requests are currently a high priority as most of these data sets will require pre-processing to collate data from different sources into one feature, create an atlas page, and then quantify into Marxan planning units prior to running analyses.

The Project Team has also drafted proposed methods and data sources for representing physical features of the marine environment, based on several recent and on-going efforts in the province. The proposal was sent to a number of experts for comment and review, and was revised substantially based on the expert input. The revised working version of our plan to represent the physical marine environment in the atlas and in Marxan analyses has been posted on the website.

The BCMCA has requested most of the data sets required to support preparation of the physical marine features. Illustrating the physical features of the marine environment for the atlas and representing these features in the spatial analyses is an important component to the project. As species are mostly found in association with specific habitats, representing the full range of physical marine features and habitats can help to ensure that the majority of species and their supporting natural systems will also be represented.

Parks Canada is undertaking some of the pre-processing work required to map important physical marine features identified in the BCMCA plan. In particular, Parks Canada is developing two comprehensive maps. The first will illustrate benthic habitat types, based on bathymetry, seafloor features (e.g., ridges, slopes and depressions), and substrate type, and the second will illustrate oceanographic regions based on physical oceanographic characteristics and processes. Parks Canada is undertaking this work as part of their program and has agreed to share the results with the BCMCA for our project.

Atlas Pages and Planning Units

‘Planning units’ are spatial building blocks required for Marxan analyses. All of the ecological and human use data must be quantified into these blocks in order to spatially standardize all the information for the analyses.

While ‘planning unit’ is a Marxan term, ‘analysis unit’ is more appropriate for the BCMCA, as this project is not a planning process. The Project Team decided to use 2 x 2 km squares for the entire coast, shelf and slope, and 4 x 4 km squares for everything seaward of the base of the continental slope. The unit size and configuration were selected to reflect the quality and resolution of recommended data sets, and the processing efficiency of Marxan. A sample map with planning units will be posted on the website.

The Project Team has also begun to design a template for the atlas pages and has enlisted a cartography expert to assist in this design. The atlas is being designed for optimal viewing on-line and hardcopy.