Multi-Attribute Ecological and Socioeconomic Geodatabase for the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Region of the United States

Abstract

Strategic, data driven conservation approaches are increasing in popularity as conservation communities gain access to better science, more computing power, and more data. High resolution geospatial data, indicating ecosystem functions and economic activity, can be very useful for any conservation expert or funding agency. A framework was developed for a data driven conservation prioritization tool and a data visualization tool. The developed tools were then implemented and tested for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal region defined by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council. As a part of this tool development, priority attributes and data measures were developed for the region through 13 stakeholder charrettes with local, state, federal, and other non-profit organizations involved in land conservation. This paper presents the measures that were developed to reflect stakeholder priorities. These measures were derived from openly available geospatial and non-geospatial data sources. This database contained 19 measures, aggregated into a one km2 hexagonal grid and grouped by the overarching goals of habitat, water quality and quantity, living coastal and marine resources, community resilience, and economy. The developed measures provided useful data for a conservation planning framework in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal region.

Discrete Global Grid Systems as scalable geospatial frameworks for characterizing coastal environments

“…Hexagonal grids have been used as the basis for coastal frameworks, both for smaller scale habitat assessments ( Smith et al, 2010 ) and for broader scale characterizations ( Shamaskin et al, 2020 ). The 2019 NOAA/Alaska Department of Natural Resources coastal priorities assessment used a hexagon-based framework to gather stakeholder mapping needs for CoNED ( Alaska DNR, 2020 ).…”

Operationalising coastal resilience to flood and erosion hazard: A demonstration for England

“…This work is provided by the authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly work on a non-commercial basis. *** However, the growing availability of open geospatial datasets means that data-driven resilience assessments are now a practical possibility (Rumson et al, 2019;Shamaskin et al, 2020). Numerous studies have already applied statistical analyses to multivariate measures of exposure and vulnerability that can be considered indicative of resilience within coastal communities (e.g.…”

“…Ramieri et al, 2011;Christie et al, 2018), including those that explicitly cite resilience as a policy goal (e.g. Shamaskin et al, 2020). The extension of these analyses to encompass a wider range of resilience-related measures has become feasible with the growing availability of open datasets that provide insights into not just the geographical variation in hazards but also their consequences for coastal systems (Rumson et al, 2020).…”