Abstract
In the past decade, the boom of large scale spatial products enrich conservation experts with more resources and data to make smarter and more comprehensive land conservation decisions on large study areas. Web application, as one of the most accessible methods to share data across a large audience, has been increasingly used to provide intuitive visualization to support conservation efforts. However, as the data increase in size, visualizing large volumes of spatial datasets dynamically through web application has become increasingly challenging. In this research, we developed the Conservation Visualization Tool (CVT), which provides a region-wide visualization based on the existing data measures available in the Strategic Conservation Assessment (SCA) database. The tool was developed and tested with five conservation goals proposed by the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) Restore Council and was used as a framework for grouping the identified conservation plans and projects. The goals are 1. Restore and Conserve Habitat, 2. Restore Water Quality, 3. Replenish and Protect Living and Marine Resources, 4. Enhance Community Resilience, and 5. Restore and Revitalize the Gulf Economy. The SCA database contains over 20 ecological and socioeconomic indicators across the five Restore goals. Each of these data measures was converted into a one square km hexagonal grid format over the entire GoM Region. Based on users’ organizational priorities and conservation emphasis, the system would perform a calculation that combines the existing data values within the database with the users’ conservation priorities and generate a region-wide spatial visualization ‘on-the-fly’. The CVT would be used to identify potential conservation hotspots based on customized priorities schema as well as explore the spatial distribution of conservation potential across the region.
