Coral reefs, together with mangrove ecosystems and seagrass ecosystems, provide natural coastal protection. Ecologically, coral reefs are the feeding, nursery and spawning ground for many marine organisms which makes it sensitive to physical and chemical environmental factors, that can become limiting factors.
Physical environmental factors that have significant role in the development of coral reefs are temperature, depth, salinity, and turbidity. With the Open Ocean Data (MariMap) tool, ocean-based data derived from historical and ongoing satellite programs can be visualised in graphs at point locations or in spatial maps.
Users can download this data and also share it as a widget on external websites and platforms. What makes this tool unique is that it is a community-based, open data platform where several datasets can be combined or compared simultaneously resulting in all kinds of new insights all to better understand our interactions with the open ocean.
Nutrient enrichment and eutrophication may give rise to increased phytoplankton biomass, increased frequency and duration of phytoplankton blooms and increased primary production, which can have a long term negative impact on the local environment. Our tool maps and measures leels of chlorophyll-a, used as an estimate of phytoplankton biomass, which can then be included in most eutrophication monitoring programs.
The impacts of coral reefs from rising sea temperatures. When coral reefs become heat-exposed they die, leaving the white dead coral, also known as bleaching. With even moderate pollution, the coral are easily overgrown with algae, or broken down by wave activity or storms, leaving only “coral rubble” on the ocean bed. This is why we seek to empower organizations to connect coral bleaching data with open ocean data like sea temperature, up to 30 meters in depth.
Blue Carbon refers to organic carbon that is captured and stored by the oceans and coastal ecosystems, particularly by vegetated coastal ecosystems like seagrass meadows, tidal marshes, and mangrove forests. Mapping and accounting for Blue Carbon is important to unleash its potential to mitigate climate change while achieving co-benefits, such as coastal protection and fisheries enhancement.
All accessible through Open Ocean Data (MariMap)
There are some additional features to be discovered in our platform.
