OpenChannels Weekly Update Archives

For the week of 11 September 2017

Letter from the Editor

Join us Wednesday, September 20 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on A General Approach and Tool to Evaluate the Effectiveness of No-Take Marine Reserves, presented by Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez, Caio Faro, Melaina Wright, and Jael Martínez of UCSB.

The benefits of no-take marine reserves - where all extractive activities are off-limits - are well known. While previous works provide a set of indicators to evaluate the performance of marine protected areas, they do not provide guidelines to analyze them nor a user-friendly tool to conduct the evaluation. Over the last year, students from The Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California Santa Barbara collaborated with the Mexican NGO Comunidad y Biodiversidad to provide managers and fishers with tools to evaluate marine reserves taking into account biophysical, socioeconomic, and governance dimensions. An open-source web application called MAREA (Marine Reserve Evaluation App), which automates the evaluation and produces a color-coded scorecard and a technical report was developed from this collaboration. This webinar will cover our general approach for identifying the objectives of a reserve and matching them with proper indicators, describe the analysis that can be performed, and do a demonstration of MAREA.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar147.

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

For the week of 4 September 2017

Letter from the Editor

Join us Thursday, September 14 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Satellite Tracking Sharks and Fishing Vessels to Assess a Remote MPA, presented by Tim White of Stanford University.

Large marine protected areas (MPAs) have recently been established throughout the world at an unprecedented pace, yet the value of these reserves for mobile species conservation remains uncertain. This webinar will describe how recent advances in satellite technology and big data analytics have improved our ability to observe and understand the benefits of large MPAs. As a primary case study, the webinar will outline recent efforts to track fishing vessels and reef sharks within the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, a U.S.-administered protected area in the central Pacific Ocean.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar146.

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

For the week of 28 August 2017

Letter from the Editor

MPA News Editor, John Davis, will be live-blogging throughout IMPAC4 next week. Follow along for important MPA-related news and information at https://oct.to/IMPAC4.

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

For the week of 21 August 2017

Letter from the Editor

Kathy Goodin of NatureServe will be presenting a webinar with us this coming Tuesday (29 August) on the Identification of Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Indicators using an Ecological Resilience Framework. For more information and to register, visit https://oct.to/OC871.

Also, the Ocean Tipping Points Community of Practice is hosting an all-expenses-paid workshop on Ocean Tipping Points in Santa Barbara, California from 1-3 November 2017. For more information on this fantastic opportunity, see https://oct.to/OC872.

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

For the week of 14 August 2017

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the latest version of the OpenChannels Weekly Update!

We are trialing a new summary-driven format to give you a brief introduction to the deluge of ocean management and conservation-related news being shared on OpenChannels.org each week.

In addition to adding these new summaries, we're also giving research-related news its own section. Any news based on primary academic research will now be grouped under the Literaturecategory below. You can find the literature linked in the Related Content section of these news posts.

As always, we would love your feedback on the new format. Love it, hate it, or just feeling "uh" about it – let us know! Nick is all ears (or, well, eyes, since this is email after all) at nwehner [at] openchannels.org.

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

For the week of 7 August 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, August 15 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Completing and Using Ecosystem Service Assessment for Decision-Making: An Interdisciplinary Toolkit for Managers, presented by Susan Preston of Environment and Climate Change Canada.

This new toolkit contains key tools and resources for planning and undertaking an ecosystem services assessment and the analyses that contribute to such an assessment. It provides practical step-by-step advice on determining if an “ecosystem services” approach is needed in a given situation; completing a robust ecosystem service assessment; understanding what the results of such an assessment mean and what they do not mean; and incorporating ecosystem services analyses and considerations in a wide range of policy, decision, and management processes.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar145.

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

For the week of 31 July 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, August 29 at 1pm US EDT / 10am US PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on the Identification of Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Indicators using an Ecological Resilience Framework, presented by Kathy Goodin of NatureServe.

Resource managers must monitor ecologically appropriate indicators to effectively evaluate the performance of their activities and to guide adaptive management. To support indicator monitoring efforts, we developed a set of ecological condition and ecosystem service indicators for five ecosystems in the Gulf using an ecological resilience framework. With input from ecosystem experts, we created conceptual ecological models that identify the drivers, stressors, major ecological factors and their key ecological attributes. Using the models as a guide, we identified indicators, metrics and assessment points that will allow monitoring programs to better gauge ecological condition and ecosystem service provision. This work can be used directly by resource managers and restoration practitioners to guide and evaluate the performance of their efforts.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar144.

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

For the week of 24 July 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, August 22 at 9am EDT / 6am PDT / 1pm UTC / 3pm CEST / 4pm IDT for a PANORAMA – Solutions for a Healthy Planet webinar on Do Data or Desires Drive MSP?

This webinar will be presented by Tundi Agardy (Sound Seas), Jon Day (James Cook University), and Michelle Portman (Technion University).

Data needs, data availability, data sharing, data management…these are always hot topics when countries or institutions embark on Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). But how much do data influence MSP processes and is a lack of data a constraint for successful MSP?

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar143.

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

For the week of 17 July 2017

Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,

Join us Tuesday, July 25 at 1pm EDT / 10am PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Bringing finance and conservation together: the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation, presented by John Tobin-de la Puente of Cornell University.

The Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation (CPIC) was launched in September 2016 to develop new investment models and funding pipelines for conservation and sustainable development. Three of the coalition’s initial focus areas are watershed management, green infrastructure for coastal resilience, and sustainable coastal fisheries. The group is currently working on developing investment “blueprints” for these areas, i.e., models for investable deals can that produce both environmental and financial returns. Once these blueprints are ready, the coalition will serve as a hub to connect investable conservation projects with financial organizations that are able to structure deals around those projects.

For more information and to register, please visit https://oct.to/OCWebinar140.

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