NOAA NCCOS Assessment: Prioritizing Areas for Future Seafloor Mapping, Research, and Exploration Offshore of California, Oregon, and Washington from 2019-03-01 to 2019-04-01

Spatial information about the seafloor is critical for decision-making by marine resource science, management and tribal organizations. Coordinating data needs can help organizations leverage collective resources to meet shared goals. To help enable this coordination, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) developed a spatial framework, process and online application to identify common data collection priorities for seafloor mapping, sampling and visual surveys offshore of the West Continental United States Coast (WCC). Twenty-six participants from NOAA’s West Coast Deep Sea Coral Initiative (WCDSCI) and Expanding Pacific Research and Exploration of Submerged Systems (EXPRESS) entered their priorities in an online application, using virtual coins to denote their priorities in 10x10 minute grid cells. Grid cells with more coins were higher priorities than cells with fewer coins. Participants also reported why these locations were important and what data types were needed. Results were analyzed and mapped using statistical techniques to identify significant relationships between priorities, reasons for those priorities and data needs. Ten high priority locations were broadly identified for future mapping, sampling and visual surveys. These locations were distributed throughout the WCC, primarily in depths less than 1,000 m. Participants consistently selected (1) Exploration, (2) Biota/Important Natural Area and (3) Research as their top reasons (i.e., justifications) for prioritizing locations, and (1) Benthic Habitat Map and (2) Bathymetry and Backscatter as their top data or product needs. This ESRI shapefile summarizes the results from this spatial prioritization effort. This information will enable NOAA WCDSCI, EXPRESS and other WCC organization to more efficiently leverage resources and coordinate their mapping of high priority locations along California, Oregon and Washington. 

This effort was funded by NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program (DSCRTP) through its WCDSCI. The overall goal of the project was to systematically gather and quantify suggestions for seafloor mapping, sampling and visual surveys for the WCDSCI and EXPRESS. The results are expected to help WCDSCI, EXPRESS and other organizations on the WCC to identify locations where their interests overlap with other organizations, to coordinate their data needs and to leverage collective resources to meet shared goals.

There were four main steps in the WCC spatial prioritization process. The first step was to identify the technical advisory team, which included the 11 members of the DSCRTP WCDSCI Steering Committee and all of the participants involved in the EXPRESS campaign. This advisory team invited 37 participants for the prioritization. Step two was to develop the spatial framework and an online application. To do this, the WCC was divided into five subregions and 3,265 square grid cells approximately 10x10 minutes in size. Existing relevant spatial datasets (e.g., bathymetry, protected area boundaries, etc.) were compiled to help participants understand information and data gaps and to identify areas they wanted to prioritize for future data collections. These spatial datasets were housed in the online application, which was developed using Esri’s Web AppBuilder. In step three, this online application was used by 26 participants to enter their priorities in each subregion of interest. Participants allocated virtual coins in the 10x10 minute grid cells to denote their priorities. Grid cells with more coins were higher priorities than cells with fewer coins. Participants also reported why these locations were important and what data types were needed. Coin values were standardized across the subregions and used to identify spatial patterns across the WCC region as a whole. The number of coins were standardized because each subregion had a different number of grid cells and participants. Standardized coin values were analyzed and mapped using statistical techniques, including hierarchical cluster analysis, to identify significant relationships between priorities, reasons for those priorities and data needs. This ESRI shapefile contains the 10x10 minute grid cells used in this prioritization effort and associated the standardized coin values overall, as well as by organization, justification and product. For a complete description of the process and analyses please see: Costa et al. 2019.