The IODE/ICAM WORKSHOP ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN MARINE ATLAS (CMA) was held at the United Nations House in Barbados between 8 and 10 October 2007.
The meeting objective were:
- To inform the participating countries of the potential benefits of a Caribbean Marine Atlas;
- To identify current national coastal zone management arrangements;
- To identify national and regional coastal and marine issues that could be the focus of the Caribbean Marine Atlas;
- To identify the national resource requirements of the participating countries to enable full participation in a Caribbean Marine Atlas Pilot Project;
- To prepare a draft work plan of a Caribbean Marine Atlas Pilot Project, for submission to, and approval by the respective national governments
The meeting was attended by participants from Barbados, Cuba, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos. The meeting was kindly hosted by United Nations House and local arrangements were made by the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU) of Barbados (Lorna Inniss and Ramon Roach). Invited experts included Ms Sherry Heileman (ICAM expert) and Mr Greg Reed (IODE Co-Chair, Australia). The IOC secretariat was represented by Mr Cesar Toro (IOCARIBE Secretariat) and Mr Peter Pissierssens (IODE Secretariat/ IOC Project Office for IODE, Oostende).
The meeting identified a number of priority issues including coral reefs, seagrass, beaches, overfishing, seage pollution, nitrates/nitrites, solid waste, hurricanes and sea level rise that are of concern to most participating countries, and for which data are either available or must be identified. The next step will inlude identifying training requirements, composition of national marine atlas teams, identifying national team leaders and selection of a regional team leader, and setting up of the CMA web site. Early 2008 training courses will be organized at the IOC project office for IODE (Oostende, Belgium) in data management, GIS, data mining and assimilation, and mapserver. Marine atlases will be developed at the national level (focusing on local and national issues) as well as at the regional level.
The Caribbean Marine Atlas project has been started with the Workshop and the first Prototype will be launched by early September 2008.
The Agenda, Presentations, Background Documents and repor tof the workshop are available HERE
You can also download the full report from this page (click on image)
MORE INFO ON THE CARIBBEAN MARINE ATLAS HERE
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Created on: Wednesday, 17 October 2007 14:38
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Last Updated on: Monday, 01 July 2013 12:20
