Mapping Ocean Wealth (MOW) is an initiative to develop a detailed and spatially explicit value of coastal and marine ecosystem services at different scales, organized by The Nature Conservancy. The main idea behind the initiative is to inform decision-makers with robust estimates of the value of marine ecosystems globally. One of TNC’s chosen hotspots for the project is the Gulf of California and that’s where GCMP’s collaboration comes in.
In late January this year, Andrew F Johnson and I joined a small group of scientists at Cambridge University, UK to work on the fisheries component of the MOW project. The aim was to share and develop ideas of how to calculate the value of fisheries based on habitat requirements of species and present day fishing industry infrastructures. During the workshop we explored commonalities and lessons learned within each of the main regions for the MOW project (US East coast, Micronesia and the Gulf of California). Discussion revolved around how to classify habitat areas important for the fisheries within each area and how to scale up from small to large scales.
This workshop was an important stepping-stone to review each groups work, add new ideas to our analyses and begin to tie lose ends together moving towards calculating the total value of fisheries within each study region. We are excited to be part of this initiative, which will enable us to map the value of different ecosystems, both at a regional and global scales.
List of Workshop participants:
Philine Zu Ermgassen – TNC / Cambridge University
Jonathan Grabowski – Northeastern University
Andrew F Johnson – GCMP / Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Alastair Harborne – Florida International University
Robert Brumbaugh – TNC
Mark Spalding – TNC / Cambridge University
Emma Garnett – TNC / Cambridge University
Marcia Moreno Baez – CBMC / GCMP
During our time in Cambridge we were also treated to an historic tour of the University’s colleges – thanks Philine for organizing!
Author
Marcia Moreno-Baez is a researcher of the Centro para La Biodiversidad Marina y la Conservacion, La Paz, Mexico. Dr. Moreno-Báez works in the study of spatial and temporal dimensions of human-environment interactions using GIS technologies to make complex science easy and digestible and directly applicable to real management applications.
