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Background
In October 2003, a broad spectrum of African marine and coastal experts met
in
Brussels
,
Belgium
, to plan the ODINAFRICA 3
Framework, including a number of projects and deliverables building on the
previous successes of earlier capacity-building efforts.
Although the principal focus of
ODINAFRICA
3 was the establishment of “a Pan African Network of in situ coastal
observing Stations providing Data to the African Ocean Data Information
Network,” a significant portion of the efforts were also concerned with
gathering, analyzing and synthesizing existing data into a carefully defined
suite of data products for decision-makers, particularly geospatial atlases.
These ancillary activities are summarized in Annex I, and abstract of
authorizing materials in the ODINAFRICA program plan.
It is clear from these materials that an atlas, or suite of atlases, was
determined to be essential to ODINAFRICA
3. During early
2006, the IODE Project Office synthesized existing atlas topic lists into a
draft that was circulation among the
ODINAFRICA
3 community for comments
suggestions, based on extensive material provided, a Topical
Outline was provided for use by this project. Using that outline as a
starting point, the AMA Editors mined known Internet
sources for relevant datasets to include in AMA.
Methods
The atlas
development took place over the course of one calendar year, and it included the
following technical procedures:
- Identify
geographic Area of Interest (AOI) for the Atlas
- Organize and augment the
topical outline into a true subject taxonomy
- Gather all
available global data according to the agreed-upon scope of topics, geographic
limits and temporal considerations, from online sources and published CD-ROMs
- Due to the scope of available global datasets, national- and local-scale
data are being deferred to a later stage
-
Simultaneously identify all available metadata links and source location URLs
- Survey all gridded datasets
(and some others, as necessary) for data value
ranges to set standard image legend parameters
- Convert all
data to appropriate GIS formats
- Shapefiles for vector-type data
- ASCII ArcGrids for gridded data and Level 3 satellite imagery
- Geo-referenced images to accompany most arrays
- Clip all GIS
files to the AOI
- Convert other
data to desirable products (e.g. seasonal climatological grids/contours)
- Convert these
products to the correct final GIS formats
- Create a
browser interface (based on the subject taxonomy) to the GIS files, with
parallel links to the available metadata files and source location URLs
- Publish the
atlas on the Internet with a browser interface using a static HTML web
- PLANNED: Publish the
atlas on a Web Map Server
- PLANNED:
Publish the resultant browser-based atlas on DVD for dissemination to marine
and coastal scientists
- PLANNED: Produce
a hardcopy publication
Results
The African Marine Atlas is
comprised of comprises of easily downloadable data on various key themes
relevant to the marine and coastal environment of Africa. They can readily
used in many geographical information systems, including the most common
commercial and public domain systems. AMA also contains dataset
descriptions and links to the original publisher and/or current source of the
data, and links to pertinent metadata records, when available. This atlas is
intended both to provide necessary datasets directly to concerned scientists,
and to set the stage for the development of decision-makers' toolkits that rely
on geospatial information.
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