Webinars
Upcoming Webinars
Valuing Marine Ecosystem Services for Better Decisions
Wednesday, April 8, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC/6 pm BST. Presented by: Angela Fletcher and Glen Delaney of Earth Economics. Description: Marine and coastal ecosystems provide many ecosystem services that are essential to human communities, including food, recreational opportunities, and protection of infrastructure from natural disasters. These benefits are not often framed in economic terms, which can lead to them being overlooked in decision-making. Communicating ecosystem services in economic terms can support more holistic decision-making that accounts for the full range of benefits these systems provide. In this webinar, Angela Fletcher and Glen Delaney of Earth Economics will introduce the fundamentals of ecosystem service valuation and demonstrate how they have applied these methods in marine and coastal contexts. Earth Economics is a nonprofit economic consultancy with 26 years of experience applying valuation techniques in decision-making, policy, and project implementation. They will begin with a brief overview of ecosystem services and valuation basics, then walk through three real-world case studies that illustrate how valuation can inform conservation, restoration, and policy decisions: a valuation study of kelp forests along the California coast; the use of valuation to inform a National Marine Sanctuary application for the St. George Unangan Heritage site; and how valuation can support funding for salmon habitat restoration in the Duckabush Estuary in Washington State.
Coastal Marine Litter Observatory: Combining drones and AI for real-time beach and coastal monitoring
Thursday, April 16, 10 am US EDT/7 am US PDT/2 pm UTC/3 pm BST/4 CEST/5 pm EEST. Presented by: Kostas Topouzelis of Scidrones. Description: Marine litter is a significant environmental problem that can dramatically affect flora and fauna and have severe economic impacts on coastal communities, tourism, and fisheries. Currently, most mapping protocols for marine litter in the coastal environment rely on conventional on-site sampling, with limited ability to spatially display concentrations of coastal zone marine waste. To provide real-time, actionable data, Scidrones has created the Coastal Marine Litter Observatory (CMLO), an online platform that detects, maps, and monitors marine litter in the coastal zone using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and machine learning. UAS aerial images – collected using the Scidrones data acquisition protocol and uploaded to the CMLO platform – provide wide area coverage of actual litter, and machine learning algorithms are used to detect marine litter and categorize it (i.e., plastic, paper, metal, cloth, glass and ceramic, rubber, and wood). Marine debris in the coastal zone is then visualized through high-resolution density maps and spatiotemporal analytics, enabling scalable, operational monitoring and empowering stakeholders to take precise, data-driven action for cleaner beaches and coastlines. A free trial covering 1 km of coastline is available, allowing users to test and explore the platform’s capabilities.
Past Webinars
Webinar on Apps for Marine Conservation
Understanding changes to animal and plant species and their environments is crucial to the long-term well-being of our planet, but current methods for..
New Global Seafloor Geomorphology Map and the Management of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction
This webinar originally aired on October 23, 2013. Presenter(s): Peter Harris of GeoScience Australia, and Jonas Rupp of Conservation International
From Alaska to Patagonia: IUCN Red List of the Continental Ecosystems of the Americas
In 2008, IUCN launched a process for establishing an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems that uses quantitative criteria to categorizing ecosystems..
What Will Adaptation Cost? An Economic Framework for Coastal Community Infrastructure
The new report “What Will Adaptation Cost? An Economic Framework for Coastal Community Infrastructure” provides a framework …
Water Quality Threats to Marine Protected Areas
Learn about two programs to protect the water quality critical to the health and effectiveness of marine protected areas. EPA’s Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Program …
Demonstration of Marine Valuation Databases
Ecosystem services valuation data is abundant, yet often hard to find. This is especially true for the marine world which has seen a proliferation of valuable data …
Drawing the Line: Visualizing global MPA distribution using practical protection categories with MPAtlas.org
Currently, only about 1.8% of the world’s oceans are in MPAs; far less than the 12% of land area that is protected. Of the world’s MPAs,..
Webinar Demonstration of COAST (Coastal Adaptation to Sea level rise Tool)
Many communities are ready to take action to adapt to changing conditions, but may be unsure which actions are good investments.
Citizen Science for Coastal and Marine Environments: Latest Research, Redmap Australia, Reef Watch, and Feral or In Peril
The Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) Tools Network and OpenChannels.org co-hosted this webinar on Citizen Science for Coastal and Marine Environments…
SocMon: Social Science Monitoring in Coastal and MPA Management
Peter Edwards of the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program presented this webinar with the EBM Tools Network and the National MPA Center on Thursday, July 11, 2013.