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EBM Tools Network Webinar and Office Hour Series

Tools Training

The EBM Tools Network Webinar Series highlights key tools and tool use case studies to help practitioners learn about tools quickly and determine their suitability for specific EBM projects. Webinars are held 1-3 times per month and typically last 1 hour.

Learn about and register for upcoming webinars and office hour chats.

Download recordings of past webinars below (Requires Windows Media Player 9 or higher).

Upcoming EBM Tool Demonstration Webinars

Thursday,
April 11, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar
on WWII Offshore: Monitor National Marine Sanctuary’s Battle of the Atlantic
Expedition by John Wagner of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The Battle of the
Atlantic has been called the longest, largest and most complex naval battle in
history, running throughout World War II and extending across the Atlantic to
U.S. shores. The Battle of the Atlantic Expedition is a multiyear maritime
archaeology project to survey and document historically significant shipwrecks
lost off the coast of North Carolina. Find out more about the field of maritime
archaeology, innovative archaeological survey technologies, and Monitor
National Marine Sanctuary’s efforts to raise awareness and appreciation of
these nonrenewable cultural resources. Webinar co-hosted by the NOAA National
MPA Center, MPA News, and OpenChannels. Register for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/567879617.

Tuesday,
April 23, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar
Demonstration of Our Coast-Our Future led by Kelley Higgason of the Gulf of the
Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and Michael Fitzgibbon, PRBO
Conservation Science.
Our Coast–Our Future (OCOF) provides San Francisco Bay Area planners and
managers with online maps and tools to help understand, visualize, and
anticipate vulnerabilities to sea level rise and storms. OCOF provides a
variety of information and tools needed to plan for changing Bay Area
shorelines including: seamless Digital Elevation Model (DEM) at 2 meter
horizontal resolution; 25 cm increment sea level rise projections between 0 - 2
meters with a 5 meter extreme; storm scenarios using the Coastal Storm Modeling
System (CoSMoS); and interactive maps overlaying infrastructure and ecosystem
vulnerabilities. Scenarios and decision support tools are currently available
for the North-central California coast and are anticipated to be available for
San Francisco Bay by Summer 2014. This webinar will provide information on how
these products were created as well as give a live demonstration of their
capabilities. Learn more at www.prbo.org/ocof.
Register for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/249162664.

Wednesday, April 24, 4 pm US EDT/1 pm US
PDT/8 pm GMT

Live “Office Hour” Chat on the Global
Ocean Legacy Project with Imogen Zethoven of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew Charitable Trust’s Global
Ocean Legacy project actively works with national governments and other
partners to designate very large, fully protected marine reserves around the
world. The project has been a principal driver behind the designation of the
640,000-km² Chagos MPA (UK), the 360,000-km²
Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (US), and more recently, the
502,000-km² no-take zone within Australia’s new 1 million-km²
Coral Sea Marine Reserve. Global Ocean Legacy is now working to establish
similar large reserves in the waters of the Kermadec Islands (New Zealand) and
Bermuda. Imogen Zethoven, director of Pew’s Coral Sea campaign, an effort of the
Global Ocean Legacy project, will be available during the chat to discuss the Global
Ocean Legacy project. Participants are encouraged to visit the Global Ocean Legacy project website
before the chat. The link for the chat
will be released shortly.

Thursday,
May 2, 1 pm EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar
Demonstration of Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) by Ben Sherrouse
and Darius Semmens of USGS. Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) is a GIS-based
tool to assess, map, and quantify nonmarket values of ecosystem services as
perceived by stakeholders. These perceived social values often correspond to
cultural ecosystem services, such as aesthetics and recreation. These values
can be compared among different stakeholder groups distinguished by their
attitudes and preferences regarding public uses, such as motorized recreation
or logging. SolVES derives a nonmonetary, 10-point social-values metric, the
value index (VI), from a combination of spatial and nonspatial responses to
public attitude and preference surveys. It then models the relationship between
VI and characteristics of the underlying environment, such as average distance
to water and dominant land cover. Additionally, SolVES facilitates the transfer
of social-value models to areas where primary survey data are not available.
Learn more about SolVES at http://solves.cr.usgs.gov. Register
for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/438764008.

Thursday, May 9, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar on Marine Protected Area Network Planning in the Bay
of Fundy/Scotian Shelf by Maxine Westhead of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Planning a network
of MPAs off of Canada’s East Coast of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is no small
task. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is the lead agency of this effort, working in
partnership with Environment Canada, Parks Canada and the provinces to design a
marine protected areas network that represents the region’s diverse habitats
and ecosystems to meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity, as
well as national and regional goals and mandates. Maxine will describe
the work completed to date for this unique area of Canadian waters, successes,
challenges, and next steps in the planning process. Webinar co-hosted by the
NOAA National MPA Center, MPA News, and OpenChannels. Register for the
webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/753744104.

Thursday, May 16, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar Demonstration of How to Apply CMECS to Existing
Geospatial Datasets by Mark Finkbeiner and Chris Robinson of NOAA Coastal
Services Center. The Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard
(CMECS) provides a comprehensive national framework for organizing information
about coasts and oceans and their living systems. This framework accommodates
the physical, biological, and chemical data that collectively define coastal
and marine ecosystems. The recent endorsement of CMECS by the Federal Geographic
Data Committee (FGDC) is an important step in facilitating development of
regionally consistent spatial data and integrating data derived using various
technologies. While some users will employ CMECS at the outset of their
projects, for many others CMECS will form the unifying framework for
incorporating existing spatial data classified according to other
systems. To facilitate this process, NOAA Coastal Services Center has
developed a tool which imports benthic cover data classified using the System
for Classification of Habitats in Estuarine and Marine Environments (SCHEME)
and produces a CMECS geodatabase as an output product. This tool functions in
an ESRI environment and can be adapted to work with other classification
systems. This presentation will highlight the CMECS data model, demonstrate the
tool’s functionality, describe the cross-walking process, and show how it can
be adapted to other commonly used data. Read more about CMECS at www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/publications/cmecs.
Register for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/362922144.

Thursday,
June 13, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar
on Big Ocean MPA Network: Addressing the Common Challenges of Large,
Remote Marine Protected Areas by Aulani Wilhelm of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine
National Monument. Is big always better? Big Ocean is a network of
managers and partners of existing and proposed large-scale marine managed
areas. The network’s aim is to improve the effectiveness of management efforts,
to serve as a peer learning resource and support system, and to build the
professional standards of practice for large, remote MPAs. The six founding
member sites in Australia, the United States, Kiribati, Chagos (UK) and Chile
represent more than 900,000 mi² (2.3 million km²) of
ocean ecosystems -- roughly the same size as the Mediterranean Sea. Webinar
co-hosted by the NOAA National MPA Center, MPA News, and OpenChannels. Register
for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/176985136.

Thursday,
July 11, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar on SocMon: Social Science Monitoring in Coastal
and MPA Management by Peter Edwards of the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. How do we know what
impacts MPAs and other coastal management tools are having on the lives of
people who live nearby? This information is critical for management
decisions, but often lacking. The Global Socioeconomic Monitoring Initiative
for Coastal Management (SocMon) works through regional and local partners to conduct
community-based socioeconomic monitoring. Partners collect
household and community level data about dependence on coral reef resources,
perceptions of resource conditions, threats to marine and coastal resources,
and support for strategies such as marine protected areas. Take a look at
some of these monitoring exercises and learn about findings, lessons learned
and challenges facing effective use of human dimensions data as part of coastal
resource management. Webinar co-hosted by the NOAA National MPA Center, MPA News,
and OpenChannels. Register for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/971236993.

Thursday, August 8, 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/5 pm GMT

Webinar on Drawing the Line: Visualizing Global MPA
distribution using Practical Protection Categories with MPAtlas.org
by Lance Morgan and Russell Moffitt of the Marine Conservation Institute. Currently, only
about 1.8% of the world’s oceans are in MPAs; far less than the 12% of land
area that is protected. Of the world’s MPAs, only a small fraction—less than
half—are in areas designated as no-take marine reserves, places where fishing
is prohibited. MPAtlas.org is an interactive online compilation of key information on
the world’s MPAs to help users locate and learn about individual MPAs. Speakers
will discuss country- and regional-level progress towards implementing MPAs and
allow users to obtain information on the distribution of MPAs relative to
social, political, and ecological contexts. Webinar co-hosted by the NOAA National
MPA Center, MPA News, and OpenChannels. Register for the webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/834025201.