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Accessing the Gulf of Maine’s Climate Change Data Through Webtools
Citation:
Tilburg, C., J. Latimer, AND K. Parlee. Accessing the Gulf of Maine’s Climate Change Data Through Webtools. Presented at Regional Association for Research on the Gulf of Maine (RARGOM) Annual Science Meeting, Portsmouth, NH, October 08, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
This abstract is for a poster that will describe how the ESIP webtool can be used to provide data to environmental managers for the purpose of improving decisionmaking.
Description:
Climate variables have been measured in the Gulf of Maine and its watersheds for over one hundred years and long-standing time series are available at many different institutes. However, today’s managers looking for a quick answer to scientific questions rarely have the time to download and analyze data from the various US and Canadian sources. Recognizing this issue, in 2009 Gulf of Maine Council's EcoSystem Indicator Partnership (ESIP), released a webtool that allows users to quickly look at data for air temperature, precipitation, and sea level rise alongside other ecosystem indicators. The Indicator Reporting Tool (www2.gulfofmaine.org/esip/reporting) is the result of extensive development, testing, and user input. Managers can locate data in the region using the mapping capabilities of the tool and build graphs for the time periods of interest. Snapshots created using the tool can provide critical information in a timely fashion for those faced with making decisions quickly and provide needed baseline information for use with adaptation efforts. Several workshops have been conducted since the original release to obtain user input with modifications to the Tool made on an on-going basis. In addition, updates to the climate change datasets have been made in June 2013. Through these efforts, ESIP continues to make the Indicator Reporting Tool a viable and responsive webtool for users in the region.