MISIS Black Sea Marine Atlas is a GIS application that provides user-friendly information to decision-makers on to the open public and facilitates the monitoring of Black Sea waters.
Implementation context
The Marine and Coastal Atlas was developed in the frame of MISIS project - MSFD GUIDING IMPROVEMENTS IN THE BLACK SEA INTEGRATED MONITORING SYSTEM. The overall goal of the project is to support efforts to protect and restore the environmental quality and sustainability of the Black Sea and also to develop a national integrated monitoring program in line with MSFD standards.
Aspects/Objectives
Web-based coastal atlas plays an important role in informing regional decision and policy making across a variety of themes and it also represents a portal to coastal data and information from diverse sources. The main objective of MISIS Atlas is to offer an overview of current monitoring of the Black Sea marine environment, which represents the base for the revise of the Black Sea integrated monitoring system. It aims to identify the temporal and spatial gaps, also the type of parameters and it serves as a basis for a decisions related to monitoring activities.
The first main outcome of this process is the revised Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey Monitoring and Assessment Strategy. The process of development of indicators in the Black Sea region is a part of the cooperation existing between BSC and EEA.
Method
MISIS ATLAS was developed based on MapServer application to incorporate vector and raster data and to access external data through a Web Map Service, using Smart Atlas as front-end interface. Smart Atlas is a front-end environment for developing Web Mapping applications. It is built on MapServer as the core mapping engine and works with all MapServer supported data formats through MAP files.
The online application includes a collection of GIS data layers (vector and raster) representing different national and international monitoring networks (from research institutes, universities, national and local authorities and stakeholders), physical, chemical and biological parameters, statistical analysis, protected areas and general information. The system also features advanced data control such as layer lists, feature selection, tables with information about each item, metadata viewing and links to websites, documents and auxiliary data.
Main outputs/Results
The Misis Atlas provides general layers (bathymetry, cities, countries boundary, economic exclusive zones, protected areas) and specific layers (MSFD and WFD water bodies, monitoring networks from different research institutes, university and other institutions and companies involved in physical, chemical and biological monitoring).
There are also included maps of spatial variability (fig. 3) of physical, chemical and biological parameters (Dissolved oxygen, phosphate, salinity, temperature, silicates, chlorophyll, TNOx, pH) obtained through interpolation from MISIS cruise (June 2013) data.
It also provides an overview of the number of stations, as well as the number of main biological, nutrients and hazardous substances parameters reported by the three countries, partners in the MISIS Project, both to BSC and EEA, in the period 2006-2012.
Stations and sampling frequency was calculated for period 2006-2012 for 8 groups - biological and hydrographical parameters, nutrients, heavy metals, organic pollutants, PAHs, OCPs, PCBs using statistical tools. For each group of parameters, there are maps, charts and tables explaining in detail each indicator - frequency of samples for each point stations frequency, through different size and colors.
Transferability
The WEB GIS application can be up-dated with additional data and extended to Black Sea Basin level for visualization.
Contact person
Laura Boicenco
National Institute for Marine Research and Dvelopment “Grigore Antipa” Constanta
Department of Ecology and Marine Biology
+40 241 543288
+40 729 831510
lboicenco
alpha.rmri.ro (lboicenco[at]alpha[dot]rmri[dot]ro)
Responsible entity
National Institute for Marine Research and Dvelopment “Grigore Antipa” Constanta, Romania
Funding source
Project financed by EC as an activity under EC DG Env. Programme “Preparatory/ Action – Environmental monitoring of the Black Sea basin and a common European framework programme for development of the Black Sea region/ Black Sea and Mediterranean 2011”