Develop a work plan for a biogeographic assessment of the Samoan Archipelago. The work plan will describe the proposed assessment activities and products across the Archipelago, and identify the connections among the interrelated MPA initiatives.
Coral reef ecosystems suffer from a variety of stressors, including land based sources of pollution, overfishing and impacts of climate change. Biogeographic assessments provide a process, the data and tools to conduct geospatial analyses to support marine spatial planning studies for coral ecosystem conservation. This project builds on NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA’s Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment, and NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program’s FY09 international investment to develop a biogeographic assessment for the Samoan Archipelago.
The objective of this project is to develop a work plan for a biogeographic assessment of the Samoan Archipelago, to support analyses for marine ecosystem conservation. This plan and assessment will complement and build on existing MPA initiatives at the Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the American Samoa MPA strategy and the two Samoa initiative. The work plan will include goals and objectives, identification of connection among interrelated MPA initiatives, a list of available data sets, project tasks and a draft schedule.
Developing the project plan includes initial meetings, consultations with the resource management agencies of both Samoa and American Samoa, academia and the private sector, to determine the feasibility of conducting a biogeographic assessment of the Samoan Archipelago. The proposed assessment will support multiple marine spatial planning initiatives in the Samoan Archipelago, through geospatial analyses of the spatial and temporal distributions of selected marine species, habitats, and the human/cultural uses of living marine resources. Based on initial discussions with Samoan natural resource management agencies and Conservation International, it appears that data are available to initiate the assessment.
The initial assessment and project work plan will be completed in early 2010. Implementation of the assessment will follow depending on results of project scoping and available funding.
Completed
Future
August 2009 - February 2010
Project Manager: Mark Monaco, Ph.D
1305 East West Highway
SSMC-IV, N/SCI-1
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301-713-3028 ext 160
Matt Kendall, Ph.D.
1305 East West Highway
SSMC-IV, N/SCI-1
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301-713-3028 x144
