Place Matters: Geospatial Tools for Marine Science, Conservation, and Management in the Pacific Northwest

Although the ocean provides living space for about 97 percent of life on Earth, less than 5 percent of the ocean below the surface has actually been seen, let alone explored. Now, using the geographic information system (GIS), marine scientists are gaining new insights into a once-mysterious world. A technologically sophisticated information-management and analysis system, GIS holds tremendous potential for mapping, interpreting, and managing ocean environments- from the seafloor to the shoreline.

Place Matters explores how marine GIS is contributing to the understanding, management, and conservation of the shores and ocean of the Pacific Northwest, where scientists, resource managers, and conservationists- often in collaboration- are making advances in the way that data are collected, documented, used, shared, and saved.

The contributors to Place Matters show how together they are using GIS to handle and exploit present and future data streams from observatories, experiments, numerical models, simulations, and other sources, yielding fresh insights into oceanographic, ecological, and socioeconomic conditions of the marine environment.

The book includes a conceptual framework that lays out selected methods and models for conservation-based marine GIS, working examples of marine GIS tools and large-scale implementations, and a section on the use of GIS by environmental advocacy and local citizens' organizations. A companion website includes GIS maps and databases, as well as extensive Web-based resources. With its unique focus on the use of GIS to solve marine conservation problems, Place Matters offers an important new resource for all who study and work to protect the world's oceans.