The protection of the marine environment is important to ensure that there are marine resources for future generations. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a key management tool to support the conservation of marine resources. The Convention of Biological Diversity Aichi target 11 states that by 2020, at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas.
To assist managers to understand the ecologically important seafloor features represented within their MPAs and to plan for the development of future MPAs, GRID-Arendal has built the Protected Area Impact Maps Virtual Research Environment (PAIM VRE).
The PAIM Virtual Research Environment (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 will assist 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.
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE PAIM VRE
ACCESS THE VRE NOW!
How to acces the VRE:
- Click here and login into the BlueBRIDGE Gateway or create a new account if you are not registered yet
2. Read and Accept the Terms and Conditions
3. There you go: start using the PAIM VRE.
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
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE WEBINAR PRESENTATION
BlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research