Ocean Intelligence for Coastal Communities
Abstract
Building on over a decade of developing high-tech solutions to monitor the ocean, Ocean Networks Canada's (ONC) community-based monitoring programs were developed in partnership with coastal and Indigenous communities of Canada to meet local ocean priorities that support their sustainable development. The technology allows ocean data to be easily collected for and by communities, thus supporting informed decisions about their own changing ocean environments. Community observatories are scaled to fit from ONC's existing large-scale observatories that allow communities to conduct year-round, continuous monitoring. In 2012, the first community observatory was deployed in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, making it possible for local students, citizens. scientists, and community leaders to monitor ocean conditions and changing sea ice. These observatories typically include a high definition video camera and lights, hydrophone, and a suite of sensors to measure seawater properties, such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, and turbidity. Additionally, instruments of special local relevance are added, such as a profiler in Cambridge Bay to measure ice thickness. Complementing these fixed observatories, ONC assists communities in collecting their own data over a broader geographic area using Community Fishers. Community Fishers empowers community members to easily contribute high-quality continuous data on water properties to help researchers better understand fish habitat and the changes that may be impacting the ocean environment over time. It is a mobile application for collecting ocean data by coupling a smart tablet with oceanographic sensors. This technology allows owners of vessels of opportunity to collect ocean data from a wide range of sensors, such as temperature, salinity, and pressure, using a conductivity- temperature-depth instrument. The data are uploaded, processed, archived, and freely available via ONC's open access oceanographic data management system, Oceans 2.0. The cohort of communities with community observation systems in Canada total 17 (Figure 1). These localized observing systems support ocean research activities that operate on local, regional, and global scales while also providing educational, training, and outreach opportunities.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMOS52A..07M
- Keywords:
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- 4262 Ocean observing systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL