Mapping Out Solutions
New Technology Gives Pat Halpin and Colleagues the Tools to do Better Science and be Better Resource Managers
by Tim Lucas
Pat Halpin and his team in the Nicholas School’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Laboratory have a knack for mapping out solutions.
When Environmental Defense needed a strategy for restoring river herring habitat in eastern North Carolina, Halpin’s team created customized network models that charted the best approach.
They’ve developed datasets and software to help The Nature Conservancy evaluate marine conservation priorities along the southeastern U.S. coast.
And working with colleagues at the school’s Center for Marine Conservation, they’ve developed the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) SEAMAP project, a spatially referenced online digital database to track the distribution and abundance of migratory marine animals. A massive undertaking, OBIS-SEAMAP pulls together 188 datasets, comprising more than 1.1 million individual records on nearly 450 species.
Last year, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation awarded Halpin’s lab $1.24 million to launch the Marine Ecosystem-Based Management Tool Innovation Fund, a two-year pilot program intended to get the nation’s most promising new technologies for marine and coastal management into the field more quickly.
“We don’t use technology because we want to be digital librarians; we use it because it lets us do better science and be better resource managers,” says Halpin, who is Gabel Associate Professor of the Practice of Geospatial Analysis.
“At the Nicholas School, we view technology as a tool, not an end in itself,” he says.
Halpin’s team is one of many at the Nicholas School that use advanced geospatial technologies like geographic information systems (GIS), satellite remote sensing, field surveying, simulation modeling and global positioning systems (GPS) to create integrated, intuitive tools for conservation, research and teaching.
From marine science to surficial earth processes, from environmental economics to environmental epidemiology, and from landscape ecology to conservation planning, nearly every discipline at the school benefits from, and even requires, the powerful analytical and presentation abilities of geospatial technologies for mapping out today’s environmental solutions.
photo captions: Pat Halpin; tracking example collected by Halpin and Read's labs; Halpin with Ben Best.