Geoinformatics for Marine and Coastal Management

Darius Bartlett, Louis Celliers

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351722308
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Marine Biology
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Geoinformatics for Marine and Coastal Management provides a timely and valuable assessment of the current state of the art geoinformatics tools and methods for the management of marine systems. This book focuses on the cutting-edge coverage of a wide spectrum of activities and topics such as GIS-based application of drainage basin analysis, contribution of ontology to marine management, geoinformatics in relation to fisheries management, hydrography, indigenous knowledge systems, and marine law enforcement. The authors present a comprehensive overview of the field of Geoinformatic Applications in Marine Management covering key issues and debates with specific case studies illustrating real-world applications of the GIS technology. This "box of tools" serves as a long-term resource for coastal zone managers, professionals, practitioners, and students alike on the management of oceans and the coastal fringe, promoting the approach of allowing sustainable and integrated use of oceans to maximize opportunities while keeping risks and hazards to a minimum.

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Geoinformatics for Applied Coastal and Marine Management

Darius Bartlett and Louis Celliers

CONTENTS

1.1 The Context: Coastal and Marine Spaces, and the Need to Manage Them

1.2 The Role of Spatially Enabled Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

1.3 Case Study: Cork Harbour

Acknowledgement

References

1.1 The Context: Coastal and Marine Spaces, and the Need to Manage Them

In the twenty-first century, the world is becoming increasingly dependent on the economic, social and environmental benefits derived from ocean and coastal services and resources. This is of course primarily true of those countries that have coastlines but, as Bruce McCormack has suggested in the preface to this book, even those communities that lie far inland from the sea will benefit as well. The ‘ocean economy’ has become a recognized and measured contributor to national gross domestic product (GDP) (Pauli, 2010; Economist Intelligence Unit, 2015). According to the national account of many countries, the ocean economy and marine-based industries may produce from 1–5% of their GDP (Park and Kildow, 2014). Not only has there been greater emphasis on implementing strategies to develop the economic sector, but there is also an increasing urgency for protection of marine resources. This is mirrored by Sustainable Development Goal 14, which is to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

In 2012, for example, it was projected that the Irish ocean economy would deliver approximately 0.8% of GDP by 2014 (€1.4 billion) and employ 18,480 people (full-time equivalent [FTE]; Vega et al., 2012). For 2013–2014, the United States measured an ocean economy contribution of 2.2% to GDP (US$359 billion) and employed 137 million people (Kildow et al., 2016). The ocean economy also offers opportunity for the promotion of economic growth, environmental sustainability, social inclusion and the strengthening of fisheries and aquaculture, renewable marine energy, marine bio-prospecting, marine transport and marine and coastal tourism. All of these sectors offer growth and development opportunities for coastal states and, especially, for Small Island Developing States (SIDS; UNCTAD, 2014).

However, the growth and development opportunities of the ocean economy are tempered by increasing and complex challenges facing coasts and oceans (Kenneday et al., 2002; Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2015). These include the unsustainable extraction of marine resources, marine pollution, alien invasive species, ocean acidification, climate change impacts and the physical alteration and destruction of coastal and marine habitats (UNDESA, 2014).

Human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are expected to cause much more rapid changes in the Earth’s climate than have been experienced for millennia. These may have a significant effect on coastal ecosystems, especially estuaries and coral reefs, which are relatively shallow and already under stress because of human population growth and coastal developments. Climate change may decrease or increase precipitation, thereby altering coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Wind speed and direction influence production of fish and invertebrate species, such as in regions of upwelling along the U.S. West Coast. Increases in the severity of coastal storms and storm surges would have serious implications for the well-being of fishery and aquaculture industries. Sea-level rise may inundate or cause migration of important coastal ecosystems, such as mangroves and tidal mudflats, which may be important breeding habitats for fish and other deep-sea organisms in their larval stages. The immense area and the modest extent of our knowledge of the open ocean hamper predictions of how ocean systems will respond to climate change.

Further complexity of the ocean’s economy arises from the multilayer regulatory framework under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other national, regional and multilateral as well as sectoral governance regimes (UNCTAD, 2014). This requires the development of a more coherent, integrated and structured framework that takes account of the economic potential of all marine natural resources, which include sea-ways and energy sources located in the ocean space.

Within this context there is a growing need to know enough about natural systems, processes and rates of consumption in order to make wise decisions regarding the simultaneous protection and use of natural resources. Even though about 70% of the planet’s surface is covered by ocean water, humans have only effectively explored less than 10% of this, and we have mapped even less than that in any detail. There is thus a growing urgency attached to the need for more comprehensive and reliable data related to the marine environment. This of course will require both political willingness, on an international level, and also corresponding economic investment but, when compared to other areas of major current outlay, the costs should not be seen as prohibitive: it was suggested recently that mapping the whole of the world’s oceans would cost about US$3 billion (approximately the same as a single mission to Mars), and about 200 ship-years to complete (Holden, 2015).

1.2 The Role of Spatially Enabled Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

In recognition of the many problems that have arisen in the past through inappropriate use and management of the coast, a new, more ‘environmentally oriented’ ethos of coastal management is emerging. Based on more holistic, trans-disciplinary and integrative principles (sometimes simply referred to as ‘joined-up thinking’), this new approach is aimed at sustainable management of resources for the benefit of all stakeholders. A similar evolution may also be seen at work in the context of ocean management, with the prevailing sectorial approach being increasingly placed in the broader contexts of international law and agreements, and the emergence of marine spatial planning as a framework for addressing concerns and reconciling potentially conflicting interests.

For it to work, this new philosophy depends on a thorough understanding of the entities and relationships at work in marine and coastal systems. Governments and the scientific community alike have responded to this need, leading to a major paradigm shift in scientific research (Birkin, 2013), in which an earlier focus on experimentation and reasoning is being replaced by a preoccupation with analysis of the increasing volumes of data being made available at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. For these and other reasons, spatially enabled information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly being used by coastal and marine scientists and administrators to assist them in their work.

Scientific applications have frequently been at the forefront of driving computer and information technology (Baru, 2011). In most domains, the pioneering applications of these tools were limited by the size and expense of computers, and by the limited storage, processing and graphic output capabilities of the machines available at the time (Biles et al., 1989; Marble, 2010). This was certainly the case for early applications of ICT to coastal and ocean science (Bartlett, 1999; Wright, 1999), where the challenges were further compounded by the complexity of marine and coastal environments, and the need to devise appropriate digital formats and structures to represent these particular geographies. But, as Marble and Peuquet observed, in most disciplines ‘there are problems which prove intractable when first encountered, but which are reduced within a few years through the application of additional theoretical insights as well as significant amounts of hard work and luck’ (Marble and Peuquet, 1983). As the chapters in this book will demonstrate, many of the early obstacles have now been addressed and, while a number of challenges remain, and much research and development still needs to be undertaken, the application of geospatial technologies to the demands of marine and coastal management is rapidly becoming routine.

Until the early 1980s, the main contribution of information technology to marine and coastal studies consisted primarily of stand-alone programmes, written in FORTRAN and other early languages, to address specific tasks in the fields of biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, geoscience, physical oceanography, navigation and charting, and the retrieval and editing of ocean data (for a comprehensive annotated listing of early computer programmes for oceanographic data management and analysis, including details of the programming languages used and the computers for which they were developed, see Dinger, 1970). By the early 1980s, however, collections of programmes for spatial data handling were being progressively brought together and packaged in the form of integrated, general-purpose geographical information system (GIS) toolboxes (Coppock and Rhind, 1991; Goodchild, 2000; Chrisman, 2005, 2006; Hoel, 2010). Although in their early days these systems were primarily aimed at terrestrial applications and their users, their potential to also address coastal and marine needs soon became recognized (Bartlett, 1993a,b, 2000; Wright, 2000). Since then, the range and scope of these applications have expanded rapidly as existing technologies have improved, new ones have emerged and extended methodological frameworks (Green and King, 2003; Bartlett and Smith, 2004; Wright et al., 2007; Green, 2010) have been developed.

Today, spatial information technologies are ubiquitous and no longer the preserve of the pioneer or the specifically trained specialist (see for example Carpenter and Snell, 2013). As well as their presence in the workplace, they are also pervasive and frequently to be found embedded in consumer products, including mobile phones, tablet computers, on desktop computers, in car dashboards, on the bridges of ships, on the wrists of athletes, incorporated into people’s clothing and in a myriad of other locations that would have been barely imaginable just a few years ago. Furthermore, applications based on these technologies increasingly involve the convergence and integration of multiple elements drawn from an ever-widening range of possible ingredients, including geographical information systems (GIS), digital cartography, optical and microwave remote sensing, spatial database systems, Internet and mobile phone technologies, global satellite positioning systems, light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) and other laser-based survey techniques, gaming engines, digital photogrammetry, sensors and autonomous data collecting devices and others.

The term geoinformatics has been adopted independently by a number of geospatial and geoscience disciplines (Keller, 2011) to collectively describe these technologies, their applications and the scientific disciplines that underpin them, particularly since the closing years of the twentieth century (Gundersen, 2007). For Fotheringham and Wilson (2008:1), ‘geoinformatics’ is synonymous with the related concepts of geocomputation, geoprocessing and geographic information science (sometimes abbreviated to GISci, to distinguish it from geographical information systems, GIS – see, for example, Mark, 2002; Longley et al., 2011, 2015). It is also closely related to the word ‘geomatics’, defined by Gagnon and Coleman as ‘a field of scientific and technical activities which, using a systemic approach, integrates all the means used to acquire and manage spatially referenced data as part of the process of producing and managing spatially based information’ (Gagnon and Coleman, 1990).

Technical and semantic interoperability between system components, along with greater accessibility of geoprocessing resources, ‘improve the application of geospatial data in various domains and help to increase the geospatial knowledge available to society’ (Zhao et al., 2012). This is especially important for marine and coastal management, where multiple datasets, collected by different agencies through many different means, have to be integrated, compared and analysed together. These issues of integration and data compatibility are increasingly being addressed through the development of dedicated spatial data infrastructures (Bartlett et al., 2004; Longhorn, 2004; Strain et al., 2006; Wright, 2009), comprising standards for data, computer hardware and software; geoportals designed to make easier the task of data discovery and access and rules and regulations that define the legal, financial and institutional contexts within which geoinformatics methods and applications can and should operate.

1.3 Case Study: Cork Harbour

One of the largest natural harbours in the world, Cork Harbour on the south coast of Ireland (Figure 1.1) epitomizes both the great diversity of maritime activities prevalent in a modern economy, and also the range of applications of spatial information technologies to support these.

In physical terms, the harbour is a former river valley, flooded as world sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, approximately 10,000 years ago. Its primary river, the River Lee, feeds into the harbour in the northwest, and Cork City, the second city of the Republic of Ireland, is built on former marshland at the river’s lowe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1. Geoinformatics for Applied Coastal and Marine Management
• 2. Mapping the Seabed
• 3. A GIS-Based Application of Drainage Basin Analysis and Geomorphometry in the Submarine Environment: The Gollum Canyon System, Northeast Atlantic
• 4. Recent Developments in Remote Sensing for Coastal and Marine Applications
• 5. Current and Future Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Trends in Coastal and Marine Management
• 6. Ontologies and Their Contribution to Marine and Coastal Geoinformatics Interoperability
• 7. Applied Marine Management with Volunteered Geographic Information
• 8. Geoinformatic Applications in Marine Management
• 9. Navigating a Sea of Data: Geoinformatics for Law Enforcement at Sea
• 10. Geospatial Technologies and Indigenous Knowledge Systems
• 11. Spatial Information and Ecosystem-Based Management in the Marine Arctic
• 12. Geospatial Technologies for Siting Coastal and Marine Renewable Infrastructures
• 13. Geoinformatics for Fisheries Management
• 14. Geoinformatics in Hydrography and Marine Navigation
• 15. The Use of Geoinformatics by the Irish Naval Service in Maritime Emergency and Security Response
• 16. Spatial Analysis for Coastal Vulnerability Assessment
• Index