Rob Snyder
Island Institute
P.O. Box 648
386 Main Street
Rockland, Maine 04841
207.594.9209

http://www.islandinstitute.org/mappingworkingwaters.php

Marine spatial planning initiatives, such as developing marine reserves and siting wind power facilities, require spatial data. Often, baseline data consists of biophysical information about the marine environment, yet humans also share this space. This project attempts to reconcile the relationship between community representations of practices on the water (the where and when) and biophysical data. Using Penobscot Bay as a case study, human utilization of the marine environment will be inventoried and mapped at a community level. The project will engage communities in the use of baseline spatial data by demonstrating the possible impacts of such data on marine spatial planning initiatives. Interviews and workshops will be used to solicit data on human activities—from fishing to surfing and kayaking—and inform development of a participatory GIS methodology. These meetings differ fron other planning and management processes in that they focus on “groundtruthing” community marine-use data. View project website.

Two-Year Project, $37,000