|
Progress and Grand Challenges of Marine GIS
 Dawn J. Wright 104 Wilkinson Hall, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-5506; Corresponding author: dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu, phone 541-737-1229, fax 541-737-1200 dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu,  Patrick N. Halpin Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, phalpin@duke.edu,
Introduction
After many years of focus on terrestrial applications, an increased commercial, academic, and political interest in the oceans throughout the 1990s has spurred fundamental improvements in the toolbox of GIS and its methodological framework for this domain of applications. The wider adoption of GIS by various organizations speaks to its growing utility not only for basic science and exploration, but also for ocean protection, preservation, and management (e.g., Convis, 2001; Breman, 2002; Wright, 2002; Green and King, 2003a). Indeed, "marine GIS" has progressed from applications that merely collect and display data to complex simulation, modeling, and the development of new coastal and marine research methods and concepts (and the term "marine GIS" is used here to mean applications to the deep ocean, but also to coasts, estuaries, and marginal seas). Numerous innovations in remotely sensed data (both satellite-based and in situ acoustic), ocean sensor arrays, telemetry tracking of marine animals, hydrodynamic models and other emerging data collection techniques have been added to the information data streams now available to answer marine science questions. And the commercial GIS sector continues to pay heed to the needs of marine and coastal GIS users, with many of the leading vendors entering into research and development collaborations with marine scientists and conservationists. It is the purpose of this article, however, to briefly review some longstanding challenges; challenges that underpin the successes of many of these applications but continue to provide avenues for further study, especially for posing important questions about the representation of spatial and temporal information in the marine environment (a marine GIS research agenda of sorts). In one way, the commercialization of GIS as a black box tool in the 1980s had the long-standing, beneficial effect of making GIS accessible to users who did not need advanced training in computer programming. But from an information technology perspective it may also have had the detrimental effect of limiting the research into the underlying data structures and algorithms. To wit, most papers at GIS conferences during this time dealt with research using GIS; far fewer dealt with research on the information system itself, the data structures and spatial analysis algorithms, and innovative approaches to the integration of data, models and analysis for use in scientific hypothesis generation, prediction, and decision-making. In the 1990s the advent of geographic information science (GISci), the "science behind the systems," changed this dramatically, where questions of spatial analysis (special statistical techniques variant under changes of location), spatial data structures, accuracy, error, meaning, cognition, visualization, and more came to the fore (e.g., www.ncgia.ucsb.edu; www.ucgis.org; Longley et al., 1999). Pursuant to GISci is the notion of "spatial reasoning," first defined by Berry (1995) as a situation where the process and procedures of manipulating maps transcend the mere mechanics of GIS software interaction (input, display and management), leading the user to think spatially using the "language" of spatial statistics, spatial process models, and spatial analysis functions in GIS. This has been an important concept for the oceanographic community to embrace, as many have seen the utility of GIS only for data display and management (e.g., Wright, 2000; Valavanis, 2002). Motivation: The Rapidly Increasing Demand for More Precision in the Management of Marine Resources In direct parallel with developments in terrestrial natural resource management, managers and scientists are now being tasked with answering increasingly precise questions concerning physical, biological and social resources of our coastal and marine environments. In the terrestrial realm, geospatial technologies (GIS, global positioning system, and remote sensing) have been widely and increasingly applied to assist in the "precision management" of agriculture, forestry, urban planning, business and national defense issues. There is now emerging an equally strong demand for "precision management" of coastal and marine resources. For example, the development of effective marine protected areas or time-area closures require scientists and managers to explicitly and precisely assess resource usage and potential conflicts in both space and time. The idealized goal of developing "win-win" management plans that optimize for both sustainable resource use and biological conservation will require an exceptionally high level of precision to ensure that economic and conservation resources can be separated in both space and time. Precision (as well as accuracy) in the delineation of the boundaries of these areas is a challenge (e.g., Treml et al., 2002), as they often transcend federal and state jurisdictions and may extend to the seafloor or into the subsurface. Descriptions of regulatory boundaries often are subject to misinterpretation (i.e., are imprecise), and if jurisdictional disputes arise, conservation and sustainability goals may be delayed or compromised. |