Mangroves

Demonstration Project

                                     Overview     |     Campeche     |     Veracruz

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Gulf of Mexico coastal ecosystems are faced with multiple threats both from changing climatic conditions and a growing human population and activities.  Along the coast, there are competing needs for industry, development, fisheries and conservation.  With limited resources, managers need to implement effective strategies for resource protection and management of not only one habitat, but of interconnected ecosystems.

The framework of adaptive management offers strong and specific steps for ecosystem based management.  Steps include defining project goals and objectives, establishing performance criteria, developing a set of conceptual models, establishing methods for assessing performance relative to goals, and determining ways to improve through learning. 

Tools developed under the NASA-funded Gulf of Mexico Regional Collaborative (GoMRC), as well as NASA’s COAST tool, can be used to facilitate this process.  Specifically they can be used to:

• help document local stakeholders understanding of threats and drivers for mangrove and wetland distribution through the use of the web-based conceptual modeling tool, the Conceptual Model Explorer,
• view recent and historical archive of imagery,
• visualize the most recent wetland or mangrove classification, and
• identify potential areas with habitat loss and prioritize restoration and conservation

Through two demonstration projects in Mexico’s Campeche and Veracruz regions, a team of US and Mexican scientist and managers collaborated to utilize NASA tools for coastal managements in very different ways.  Follow the links below for more information:

Veracruz Demonstration Project
Campeche Demonstration Project