EcoGIS – GIS tools for ecosystem approaches to fisheries management

Executive Summary: The EcoGIS project was launched in September 2004 to investigate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS), marine data, and custom analysis tools can better enable fisheries scientists and managers to adopt Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management (EAFM). EcoGIS is a collaborative effort between NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and four regional Fishery Management Councils. The project has focused on four priority areas: Fishing Catch and Effort Analysis, Area Characterization, Bycatch Analysis, and Habitat Interactions. Of these four functional areas, the project team first focused on developing a working prototype for catch and effort analysis: the Fishery Mapper Tool. This ArcGIS extension creates time-and-area summarized maps of fishing catch and effort from logbook, observer, or fishery-independent survey data sets. Source data may come from Oracle, Microsoft Access, or other file formats. Feedback from beta-testers of the Fishery Mapper was used to debug the prototype, enhance performance, and add features. This report describes the four priority functional areas, the development of the Fishery Mapper tool, and several themes that emerged through the parallel evolution of the EcoGIS project, the concept and implementation of the broader field of Ecosystem Approaches to Management (EAM), data management practices, and other EAM toolsets. In addition, a set of six succinct recommendations are proposed on page 29. One major conclusion from this work is that there is no single “super-tool” to enable Ecosystem Approaches to Management; as such, tools should be developed for specific purposes with attention given to interoperability and automation. Future work should be coordinated with other GIS development projects in order to provide “value added” and minimize duplication of efforts. In addition to custom tools, the development of cross-cutting Regional Ecosystem Spatial Databases will enable access to quality data to support the analyses required by EAM. GIS tools will be useful in developing Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) and providing pre- and post-processing capabilities for spatially-explicit ecosystem models. Continued funding will enable the EcoGIS project to develop GIS tools that are immediately applicable to today’s needs. These tools will enable simplified and efficient data query, the ability to visualize data over time, and ways to synthesize multidimensional data from diverse sources. These capabilities will provide new information for analyzing issues from an ecosystem perspective, which will ultimately result in better understanding of fisheries and better support for decision-making. (PDF file contains 45 pages.

Designing Improved Sediment Transport Visualizations

Monitoring, or more commonly, modeling of sediment transport in the coastal environment is a critical task with relevance to coastline stability, beach erosion, tracking environmental contaminants, and safety of navigation. Increased intensity and regularity of storms such as Superstorm Sandy heighten the importance of our understanding of sediment transport processes. A weakness of current modeling capabilities is the ability to easily visualize the result in an intuitive manner. Many of the available visualization software packages display only a single variable at once, usually as a two-dimensional, plan-view cross-section. With such limited display capabilities, sophisticated 3D models are undermined in both the interpretation of results and dissemination of information to the public. Here we explore a subset of existing modeling capabilities (specifically, modeling scour around man-made structures) and visualization solutions, examine their shortcomings and present a design for a 4D visualization for sediment transport studies that is based on perceptually-focused data visualization research and recent and ongoing developments in multivariate displays. Vector and scalar fields are co-displayed, yet kept independently identifiable utilizing human perception\u27s separation of color, texture, and motion. Bathymetry, sediment grain-size distribution, and forcing hydrodynamics are a subset of the variables investigated for simultaneous representation. Direct interaction with field data is tested to support rapid validation of sediment transport model results. Our goal is a tight integration of both simulated data and real world observations to support analysis and simulation of the impact of major sediment transport events such as hurricanes. We unite modeled results and field observations within a geodatabase designed as an application schema of the Arc Marine Data Model. Our real-world focus is on the Redbird Artificial Reef Site, roughly 18 nautical miles offshor- Delaware Bay, Delaware, where repeated surveys have identified active scour and bedform migration in 27 m water depth amongst the more than 900 deliberately sunken subway cars and vessels. Coincidently collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, and side-scan sonar data from surface and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems along with complementary sub-bottom, grab sample, bottom imagery, and wave and current (via ADCP) datasets provide the basis for analysis. This site is particularly attractive due to overlap with the Delaware Bay Operational Forecast System (DBOFS), a model that provides historical and forecast oceanographic data that can be tested in hindcast against significant changes observed at the site during Superstorm Sandy and in predicting future changes through small-scale modeling around the individual reef objects

Two-Phased Intra-Cluster Medium in the Centaurus Cluster of Galaxies

ASCA and ROSAT data of the Centaurus cluster were analyzed. A central excess in the radial brightness profile is found in the hard energy band up to 10keV. This requires a deeper central potential than a King-type one. A double-beta brightness distribution gives a good account of the data. A deprojected energy spectrum within a spherical region of radius 30 kpc at the cluster center indicates that the ICM cannot be isothermal there. Simultaneous fitting of the three (PSPC, GIS, and SIS) energy spectra extracted from the central 3' region showed that a two-temperature model that has temperatures of 1.4keV and 4.4keV and a common metallicity of 1.0 solar with the Galactic absorption gives the best description to the spectra. A cooling-flow spectral model did not give satisfactory fit. A 3-dimensional cluster model incorporating the two-phase picture, the double-beta brightness distribution, and the central metallicity increase reproduced the overall ASCA and ROSAT data successfully. The derived spatial distribution of the dark matter deviates from a King-type profile exhibiting a central excess, which is consistent with the Navvaro-Frenk-White model. The iron is revealed to be more widely spread than stars, which may have been caused by energetic supernovae and the motion of the cD galaxy. Since the derived characteristics of the cool phase including the temperature, angular extent, gas mass, and metallicity, are on a smooth extension of those of inter-stellar medium (ISM) of elliptical galaxies, the cool phase can be regarded as the ISM associated with the cD galaxy. The cool-phase X-ray emission is presumably sustained by energies dissipated by infalling mass to the cD galaxy in the course of cluster evolution.Comment: accepted for publication in Ap

Seafloor characterization using airborne hyperspectral co-registration procedures independent from attitude and positioning sensors

The advance of remote-sensing technology and data-storage capabilities has progressed in the last decade to commercial multi-sensor data collection. There is a constant need to characterize, quantify and monitor the coastal areas for habitat research and coastal management. In this paper, we present work on seafloor characterization that uses hyperspectral imagery (HSI). The HSI data allows the operator to extend seafloor characterization from multibeam backscatter towards land and thus creates a seamless ocean-to-land characterization of the littoral zone

Discovery of the Central Excess Brightness in Hard X-rays in the Cluster of Galaxies Abell 1795

Using the X-ray data from \ASCA, spectral and spatial properties of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) of the cD cluster Abell 1795 are studied, up to a radial distance of $\sim 12'$ ($\sim 1.3$ $h_{50}^{-1}$ kpc). The ICM temperature and abundance are spatially rather constant, although the cool emission component is reconfirmed in the central region. The azimuthally- averaged radial X-ray surface brightness profiles are very similar between soft (0.7--3 keV) and hard (3--10 keV) energy bands, and neither can be fitted with a single-$\beta$ model due to a strong data excess within $\sim5'$ of the cluster center. In contrast, double-$\beta$ models can successfully reproduce the overall brightness profiles both in the soft and hard energy bands, as well as that derived with the \ROSAT PSPC. Properties of the central excess brightness are very similar over the 0.2--10 keV energy range spanned by \ROSAT and \ASCA. Thus, the excess X-ray emission from the core region of this cluster is confirmed for the first time in hard X-rays above 3 keV. This indicates that the shape of the gravitational potential becomes deeper than the King-type one towards the cluster center. Radial profiles of the total gravitating matter, calculated using the double-$\beta$ model, reveal an excess mass of $\sim 3 \times 10^{13}~ M_{\odot}$ within $\sim 150 h^{-1}_{50}$ kpc of the cluster center. This suggests a hierarchy in the gravitational potential corresponding to the cD galaxy and the entire cluster.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures; to appear ApJ 500 (June 20, 1998

The mathematical approach for proximity analysis for 3D GIS

Next generation of GIS software would highly depend on 3D analysis in solving geographic problems. 3D analysis is a very important component for GIS as it defines as decision making tools for geographic features. One would like to query about geographic object from numerical calculation or propose optimum solutions for GIS applications. Such desired components in future software or system are to deal with the 3D analytical solutions. This paper presents a portion of the problems, which are 3D solid buffering for 3D GIS. This analytical solution is very important for 3D spatial analysis. The discussion related to the implementation of buffering model for solid object is the main concern in the research, where the primitive objects of point, line, and face will be taken in consideration for the development of 3D solid bufferin

A Broadband X-Ray Study of the Supernova Remnant 3C 397

We present an X-ray study of the radio bright supernova remnant (SNR) 3C 397 with ROSAT, ASCA, and RXTE. A central X-ray spot seen with the ROSAT High-Resolution Imager hints at the presence of a pulsar-powered component, and gives this SNR a composite X-ray morphology. Combined ROSAT and ASCA imaging show that the remnant is highly asymmetric, with its hard X-ray emission peaking at the western lobe. The spectrum of 3C 397 is heavily absorbed, and dominated by thermal emission with emission lines evident from Mg, Si, S, Ar and Fe. Single-component models fail to describe the spectrum, and at least two components are required. We use a set of non-equilibrium ionization (NEI) models (Borkowski et al. in preparation). The temperatures from the soft and hard components are 0.2 keV and 1.6 keV respectively. The corresponding ionization time-scales $n_0 t$ ($n_0$ being the pre-shock hydrogen density) are 6 $\times 10^{12}$ cm$^{-3}$ s and 6 $\times$ 10$^{10}$ cm$^{-3}$ s, respectively. The spectrum obtained with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) of RXTE is contaminated by emission from the Galactic ridge, with only $\sim$ 15% of the count rate originating from 3C 397 in the 5-15 keV range. The PCA spectrum allowed us to confirm the thermal nature of the hard X-ray emission. A third component originating from a pulsar-driven component is possible, but the contamination of the source signal by the Galactic ridge did not allow us to find pulsations from any hidden pulsar. We discuss the X-ray spectrum in the light of two scenarios: a young ejecta-dominated remnant of a core-collapse SN, and a middle-aged SNR expanding in a dense ISM. Spatially resolved spectroscopy (with CHANDRA and XMM) is needed to differentiate between the two scenarios, and address the nature of the mysterious radio-quiet X-ray hot spot.Comment: 21 pages including 8 figures and 5 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical journa

Technology Integration around the Geographic Information: A State of the Art

One of the elements that have popularized and facilitated the use of geographical information on a variety of computational applications has been the use of Web maps; this has opened new research challenges on different subjects, from locating places and people, the study of social behavior or the analyzing of the hidden structures of the terms used in a natural language query used for locating a place. However, the use of geographic information under technological features is not new, instead it has been part of a development and technological integration process. This paper presents a state of the art review about the application of geographic information under different approaches: its use on location based services, the collaborative user participation on it, its contextual-awareness, its use in the Semantic Web and the challenges of its use in natural languge queries. Finally, a prototype that integrates most of these areas is presented

Potential applications of geospatial information systems for planning and managing aged care services in Australia

[Abstract]: This paper discusses the potential applications of Geospatial Information Technology (GITs) to assist in planning and managing aged care programs in Australia. Aged care is complex due to the numbers of participants at all levels of including planning of services, investing in capacity, funding, providing services, auditing, monitoring quality, and in accessing and using facilities and services. There is a vast array of data spread across the entities that are joined to aged care. The decision-making process for investment in capacity and service provision might be aided by technology including GIT. This is also expected to assist in managing and analysing the vast amount of demographic, geographic, socio-economic and behavioral data that might indicate current and future demand for services the aged and frail-aged population. Mapping spatio-temporal changes in near real time can assist in the successful planning and management of aged care programs. Accurate information on the location of aged care services centres and mapping the special needs of clients and their service needs may assist in monitoring access to services and assist in identifying areas where there are logistic challenges for accessing services to meet needs. GIT can also identifying migrations of aged people and of the cohorts of the population who are likely to be the next wave of clients for aged care services. GITs include remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) technologies, which can be used to develop a user friendly digital system for monitoring, evaluating and planning aged care and community care in Australia. Whilst remote sensing data can provide current spatiotemporal inventory of features such as locations of carer services, infrastructure, on a consistent and continuous coordinate system, a GIS can assist in storing, cross analysing, modeling and mapping of spatial data pertaining to the needs of the older people. GITs can assist in the development of a single one-stop digital database which will prove a better model for managing aged care in Australia. GIT will also be a component of technologies such as activity monitors to provide tracking functionality. This will assist in tracking dementia sufferers who may be prone to wandering and be exposed to risk