The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Pole to Pole of the Americas (MBON Pole to Pole) has fully established an international consortium of universities, independent research institutes and national agencies that seeks to support of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Societal Benefit Area of AmeriGEO through the implementation of standardized data collection and sharing workflows, and provision of biodiversity knowledge, data synthesis products, and applications to inform management and conservation efforts across the continent, from the Arctic to Antarctica. The program builds capacity throughout the region on the integration of in situ biodiversity survey observations with satellite data to investigate natural and human impacts on coastal ecosystems and relevant services.
This initiative provides capacity-building in space-borne geospatial data analysis to coastal ecologists and managers that lead biodiversity monitoring efforts in their home countries. The MBON Pole to Pole has carried out several international in-person and virtual workshops focused on accessing, visualizing, and analysing satellite records of ocean colour and thermal observations from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua sensors, and NOAA's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instruments. Training activities have included the use of dynamic satellite seascapes, a novel biogeographic representation of the surface ocean derived from multi-sensor and model outputs that NOAA CoastWatch produces operationally. As a result, the program has led several studies characterizing the biodiversity of satellite seascape categories to better resolve changes in ecosystem state and health for scientific and decision-making applications.
Through its web portal the MBON Pole to Pole program facilitates access to satellite Earth Observation data. The MBON Pole to Pole web application provides access to sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a and dynamic seascape fields at 1-4 km pixel resolution and weekly intervals as maps, time series plots, and data tables. Therefore, monitoring programs contributing to the MBON Pole to Pole can now visualize and download satellite data for their survey areas to make ecosystem-based decisions built on inferences about how changes in oceanographic regime affect biological communities in the coastal zone and offshore waters.
Links:
Partners: Available at https://marinebon.org/p2p/members.html
