About Protected Areas Impact Maps VRE
The Protected Area Impact Maps Virtual Research Environment (PAIM VRE) provides the user with tools to visualize, analyze and report on a range of ecologically important seafloor features within marine protected areas - a key component of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). The interface is built around an interactive map viewer that provides visualization of a range seafloor features. The interface utilizes cloud computing to analyse the representation of seafloor features within marine protected areas for a selected exclusive economic zone or marine ecoregion. Finally, the interface presents the results of this analysis in an interactive report, with options to download the report or the results of the analysis. The interface assists users in understanding which seafloor features occur in an area and how these are currently represented in marine protected areas. This information can be used to prioritize future planning of protected areas to include seafloor features which are poorly represented.
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The interface allows the user, for a selected reporting region, to report ona range of seafloor features within managed areas:
Reporting regions: Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Marine Ecoregions.
Managed areas: Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)
Seafloor Features: Seafloor Geomorphology and Seagrass, Mangroves and Coral Reefs.
This PAIM VRE contains a reporting interface (MPA Reporting) with three main functions: 1 - Visualising, 2 - Analyzing and 3 - Reporting.
1. visualizing
The MPA Reporting interface allows users to view marine data layers such as seafloor geomorphology (seamounts, canyons, etc), seagrass, coral reefs and mangroves in a simple web map. At a glance, users can get a quick overview of the spatial distribution of different features within an area. The map interface allows users to pan around the map and zoom in on an area of interest. Two different base maps are available.
2. analyzing
The MPA Reporting interface allows users to analyze the seafloor features represented in marine protected areas within a selected target area, either an exclusive economic zones (EEZs) or a marine ecoregion. Behind the interface, a powerful algorithm, developed in R, computes feature representation within the target region. The analysis provides detailed statistical information to the representation of seafloor features inside the protected areas for the target region.
3. reporting
The PAIM MPA Reporting interface provides powerful tools to explore the analysis results. The reporting interface consists of separate results and report pages. The results page provide interactive tables and charts to explore the results split by seafloor feature and protected area name. The report page provides an overview, by protected area for each of the features, including an interactive map display and contextual information on the protected areas and features. The user can download a PDF report of the analysis and the data in a CSV format.
Any questions on the features of the PAIM VRE?
On 9 November 2017, 4:00pm CET the Protected Area Impact Maps VRE was introduced in a webinar visible at the top of this page