Other titles: Final report - BEP/BAC/03/02 Creator: De Cauwer, Vera Description: Project in collaboration with the Benguela Environment Fisheries Interaction and Training Programme (BENEFIT) for the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) Programme Publisher: Benguela Current Large Maritime Ecosystem Programme Date: September 2007 Language: English Coverage: Atlantic ocean; Namibia Abstract: The Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) programme started in 2002 and is funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). One of its main aims is to address marine and coastal conservation planning in the Benguela region. The region considered under the programme covers Angola, Namibia and South Africa up till Cape Point. Fundamental to conservation planning is a full assessment of the status and threats of biodiversity within the BCLME domain. To this end the BCLME has commissioned the Benguela Environment Fisheries Interaction and Training Programme (BENEFIT) to undertake a biodiversity assessment and mapping research programme. It consists of an overarching “MOM” project and four component projects who interact with and feed into the MOM project. MOM will utilise the information and data collected by the component projects to bring conservation planning to an operational level in each of the three countries. One of the component projects is the Physical Mapping project of which the final results are described in this report. The project is officially entitled “Mapping of the BCLME shoreline, shallow water and estuarine habitats”, although the scope of this project has been revised in the course of BENEFIT consultations and now includes the shoreline, shallow water and offshore marine areas. The aim of the physical mapping project is to map the distribution of shoreline, shallow water and marine habitats in the BCLME region through the identification and collection of existing physical data related to shoreline, shallow water and marine habitat distribution, synthesis of the collected physical data in GIS format and compilation of habitat maps based on the collected physical data. Existing physical datasets related to shoreline, shallow water and marine habitat distribution in the BCLME region were identified, as well as physical datasets (with a geospatial component) that contributes to marine and coastal biodiversity conservation planning. The accuracy, resolution, completeness and coverage of the identified data was analysed and the most appropriate datasets for use at regional level or most appropriate sources for the creation of these datasets, were selected and collected. The analysis included a comparison of the GEBCO and ETOPO global elevation datasets with hydro acoustic measurements for the marine areas of the BCLME region. The geospatial data collected was converted to GIS format and the same coordinate system. This involved a a substantial amount of digitising and conversion of coordinates to point files. The creation of the GIS layer on intertidal coast types required the development of a method to estimate the wave exposure along the coast (adapted from Howes, Harper and Owens, 1994) . During the project, 2 students of Namibia and 2 students of Angola were trained on-the-job in marine GIS mapping. A total number of 122 GIS physical data layers were compiled during this project. Most datasets are collected at national level - Namibia, Angola, South Africa - although certain datasets are covering the BCLME region. The datasets follow a standard naming convention and are organised in a systematic folder structure. A meta data file was established per data layer. All meta data was organised in one file per country following a template established by this project. About half of the compiled datasets concern completely new data layers created by the project – i.e. data layers that are not a combination or edition of existing GIS data. Physical Mapping Project - Final report, V. De Cauwer Page 7 Most effort went into the compilation of datasets considered essential to biodiversity conservation planning (in consulatation with the MOM team). These include the coastline, islands, bathymetry, marine sediments, intertidal coast types, harbours, protected zones, mining areas, human transformation of the coastline, EEZ, roads, untrawable grounds, seamounts, marine canyons, continental shelf and others. Most of these first and second priority data layers could be established for each country with exception of the classification of marine sediments for Angola, untrawable grounds for South Africa and fog data for Angola. The majority of the established datasets will fit the requirements for use at regional level. There are however a few datasets with weaknesses of which the most important are : • Angolan bathymetry close to coast : different sources were used of which the accuracy is unknown. It is advised to groundtruth and compare the data with depth measurements (soundings) and possibly correct and complement it. Texture of marine sediments : these are based on samples with unknown or low sample density. An upgrade with recently collected samples and acoustic survey data is advised. Seamounts and marine canyons : these underwater features were digitised based on the GEBCO information for Namibia and Angola. The resolution of the GEBCO data is however 1' or 1.7 km and seamounts and canyons smaller than approximately 10 km x 10 km can easily have been missed. One of the most important outputs of this project is the establishment of the biozones dataset, a major input into the MOM biodiversity conservation planning exercise. The biozones dataset could be established based on expert input, the bathymetry, EEZ, country, continental shelf, settlement and places datasets. It should be stressed that the datasets established for this project are not all owned by the BCLME/BENEFIT project and that their main purpose is to serve as an input into the MOM project. Certain datasets have copyrights, can not distributed to third parties and/or need acknowledgement or referencing. It is therefore not permissible to freely distribute the physical mapping dataset as is. The BCLME must take cognisance of this fact as there are legal implications associated with this. Accompanying letter of agreement with data sources are referred. This project could not have be realised without the assistance and cooperation of many organisations and persons. All these persons and organisations are mentioned in the report (mainly in unit 2 – project team) or in the meta data. It is recommended to invite all these persons and representatives of the organisations to a final workshop at which the BCLME/BENEFIT biodiversity project results are presented. Several of the persons that contributed data will be interested in the final results, may even want to use them and could be interested in any assessments of their data sets in terms of the accuracy and completeness of the data they provided |
Mapping of the BCLME shoreline shallow water and marine habitats physical mapping report: Physical mapping project