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Green Fins: A tool for reducing the direct impacts of diving and tourism industries

Submitted by nwehner on June 16, 2017 - 11:04am

For the week 12 June 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Thursday, July 13 at 1pm EDT / 10am PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Green Fins: A tool for reducing the direct impacts of diving and tourism industries.

Join Chloe Harvey of Reef-World to learn about Green Fins, a public-private partnership developed by UNEP and The Reef-World Foundation to lead to a measurable reduction in negative environmental impacts associated with SCUBA diving and snorkeling. This webinar will provide information on the Green Fins approach, share successes, and discuss lessons learned. The presentation will highlight newly released tools and resources available to support managers who are interested in reducing the impacts of marine tourism and applying the Green Fins approach in their areas.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar139.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Allie Brown, Nick Wehner, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Join us 28 June for a webinar on Solutions for a Healthy Planet: Scaling community-led MPA management

Submitted by nwehner on June 9, 2017 - 8:54am

For the week 5 June 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Wednesday, June 28 at 3pm US EDT / noon US PDT / 9pm CET for a webinar on Solutions for a Healthy Planet: Scaling community-led MPA management.

Blue Solutions provides a global knowledge network and capacity development platform to collate, share, and generate solutions for effective management and equitable governance of our planet’s marine and coastal living spaces, and to develop capacity for the ocean community on the initiative’s priority topics. For this webinar, presenters will showcase two examples of “Blue Solutions” case studies for scaling community-led marine protected area management, explain what made them successful and discuss with the audience.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar137.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Allie Brown, Nick Wehner, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Join us Tuesday for a webinar on Using US Whistleblower Laws to Fight Illegal Fishing and Marine Pollution and Fund MPAs

Submitted by nwehner on June 2, 2017 - 2:33pm

For the week 29 May 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, June 6 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Using US Whistleblower Laws to Fight Illegal Fishing and Marine Pollution and Fund MPAs, presented by Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center.

Rewards for whistleblowers – people who inform authorities when a law has been broken – have been extremely successful when effectively implemented. Whistleblower rewards incentivize insiders to report information, and support law enforcement’s ability to detect crime that they might not otherwise uncover. This webinar will provide an overview of whistleblower reward laws relevant to marine practitioners, as well as resources to help wildlife and marine pollution whistleblowers.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar135.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Allie Brown, Nick Wehner, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Join us June 8 for a webinar on A Coastal Conservation Leadership Program in Washington State

Submitted by nwehner on May 26, 2017 - 9:04am

For the week 22 May 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Thursday, June 8 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on A Coastal Conservation Leadership Program in Washington State, presented by Casey Dennehy of the Surfrider Foundation.

The Surfrider Leadership Academy is a unique program on the Washington State coast that has been offered to coastal conservation leaders the last two years. The program follows the principles of networked leadership, collaboration, and Marshall Ganz's public narrative framework and concludes with a self-identified group project.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar136.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Allie Brown, Nick Wehner, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Using US Whistleblower Laws to Fight Illegal Fishing and Marine Pollution and Fund MPAs

Submitted by nwehner on May 19, 2017 - 9:01am

For the week 15 May 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, June 6 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Using US Whistleblower Laws to Fight Illegal Fishing and Marine Pollution and Fund MPAs, presented by Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center.

Rewards for whistleblowers – people who inform authorities when a law has been broken – have been extremely successful when effectively implemented. Whistleblower rewards incentivize insiders to report information, and support law enforcement’s ability to detect crime that they might not otherwise uncover. This webinar will provide an overview of whistleblower reward laws relevant to marine practitioners, as well as resources to help wildlife and marine pollution whistleblowers.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar135.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Wednesday: Ecological Marine Units: A 3-D Mapping of the Ocean Based on NOAA’s World Ocean Atlas with Dawn Wright

Submitted by nwehner on May 12, 2017 - 8:55am

For the week of 8 May 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Wednesday, May 17 at 2pm US EDT / 11am US PDT / 6pm UTC for a webinar on Ecological Marine Units: A 3-D Mapping of the Ocean Based on NOAA’s World Ocean Atlas, presented by Dawn Wright of Esri.

This webinar reports progress on the Ecological Marine Units (EMU) project, a new undertaking commissioned by the Group on Earth Observations, to develop a standardized and practical global ecosystems classification and map for the oceans. The EMU is comprised of a global point mesh framework, created from 52,487,233 points from the NOAA World Ocean Atlas. Each point has x, y, z, as well as six attributes of chemical and physical oceanographic structure (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, silicate, phosphate) that are likely drivers of many ecosystem responses. This webinar will provide an overview of the EMU project and cover recent developments and future plans for the EMUs.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar134.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

The new He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve

Submitted by nwehner on May 5, 2017 - 8:21am

For the week 1 May 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Thursday, May 11 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on The new He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve, presented by Matthew Chasse of NOAA.

The newly designated He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve is the 29th in the National Estuarine Research Reserve system and the first in Hawaii. The 1,385-acre reserve includes upland forests and grasslands, wetlands, reefs, and seagrass beds, as well as the largest sheltered body of water in the Hawaiian Island chain. The reserve also includes significant historic and cultural resources. This webinar will cover the process leading to the designation, and the reserve’s partnerships and management goals, including the integration of traditional Hawai'ian ecosystem management with contemporary approaches.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar133.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Tuesday: Webinar on the Ocean Health Index as an Integrated Tool for Implementing EBM and Coastal Management Approaches

Submitted by nwehner on April 28, 2017 - 9:46am

For the week 24 April 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, May 2 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on, Using the Ocean Health Index as an Integrated Tool for Implementing EBM and Coastal Management Approaches Globally, presented by Erich Pacheco and Johanna Polsenberg of Conservation International, and Julie Lowndes of NCEAS.

The Ocean Health Index (OHI) is the first assessment tool that scientifically combines key biological, economic, and social elements of ocean health to guide decision makers towards sustainable use of the ocean. Now working in more than 30 countries globally, the Ocean Health Index is a useful tool across geographic jurisdictions where coastal and marine policy decisions are made. Its standardized structure is repeatable and familiar across assessment jurisdictions but it is flexible to represent the important social and ecological characteristics, values, and priorities of the area assessed. Independent groups are able to lead assessments within their own waters, deciding what is important to measure and which data to include while building directly from the experiences and methods from other OHI assessments.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar132.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Join us Tuesday for a webinar on The SeaSketch Platform: Tools for Decision-Support and Managing Public Processes

Submitted by nwehner on April 21, 2017 - 8:48am

For the week 17 April 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, April 25 at 2pm US EDT / 11am US PDT / 6pm UTC for a webinar on, The SeaSketch Platform: Tools for Decision-Support and Managing Public Processes, presented by Will McClintock and Grace Goldberg of the University of California Santa Barbara.

SeaSketch is a decision support tool that supports collaborative map-based design workflows – putting science and information at the center of participatory processes. SeaSketch empowers all participants to engage directly with GIS tools – exploring mapped data, expressing and analyzing their plan ideas, and more. Over the past five years, SeaSketch has been used in dozens of projects all around the world – ranging from comprehensive marine spatial planning processes to community-driven conservation planning processes to facilitating collaboration between remote teams of scientists planning for data acquisition and vetting existing data sets. This webinar will give participants an overview of the SeaSketch platform, share exciting new feature additions that have been implemented to strengthen collaboration between remote teams, and highlight the resources tool developers provide so users can get the most out of their SeaSketch project.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar131.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

Thursday: Webinar on Capacity Shortfalls Hinder the Performance of MPAs Globally

Submitted by nwehner on April 14, 2017 - 1:32pm

For the week 10 April 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Thursday, April 20 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Capacity Shortfalls Hinder the Performance of MPAs Globally, presented by David Gill of Conservation International and George Mason University.

Over the past two decades, marine protected areas (MPAs) have become a prominent tool to conserve marine ecosystems globally. Many unanswered questions remain regarding the ecological impacts of MPAs and the linkages between MPA management and resulting impacts, however. Using a global database of management and fish population data (433 and 218 MPAs, respectively), the authors of a major new study published in Nature found that most MPAs positively impact marine fish populations and that the magnitude of these impacts are strongly associated with available staff and budget capacity. Despite the critical role of MPA management, only 35 percent of MPAs globally reported acceptable funding and only 9 percent globally reported adequate staffing. While the global community focuses on expanding the current MPA network, these results emphasize the importance of meeting capacity needs in current and future MPAs to ensure the effective conservation of marine species.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar130.

Thank you for being a part of the OpenChannels Community,
-Nick Wehner, Allie Brown, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

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