from pollution, ecotourism and other stressors, and the need of the local people to use
the reef as a food resource. A local fisherman may be quite aware of the long-term
damage that pipe bombing does, but his first priority is to get food for his family’s
dinner. The authors note the impact of the ‘digital divide’ between the local
community and aid organizations. A remote sensing product cannot be ‘parachuted’ in
with an expectation for a change in behavior that the ‘educated’ organization is
advocating. An approach based upon ‘design with culture’ that involves the
community from the formative stages is discussed. Effective communication is a
critical component. In the instance when a group may not respond to a map because
their tradition is to list things, not to spatially orient things, other approaches, such as
story telling, may be more effective. The authors note that: “Being attentive to local
traditions, knowledge, and beliefs provides significant benefits, as the local people:
• are directly aware of the current status of the marine resource on which they
depend
• possess an inherent temporal knowledge of patterns within and changes to the
marine environment
• are valuable resources for developing monitoring and managing strategies.
It is also important to be aware of the challenges that accompany local knowledge and
the limitations of local knowledge’s usefulness, which may include:
• the local knowledge is contained in a verbal medium and is often unverified
• the attitudes of local people towards their resource may not include a
conservation outlook (which can discourage proper management plans)
• the local knowledge is exclusive to the area, with minimal overlap between
regions within small spatial proximities
• the variability of human and physical events from one shallow coastal water
environment to another may prevent the incorporation of an approach that was
deemed successful elsewhere.” (Newman et al., Chapter 11, this book).
In Chapter 12, Robinson et al., address the issue of data synthesis. With the
explosion in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) which include layers of digital
maps, data fusion which includes integration of many different data types to distill more
meaningful data, and change detection techniques whereby typically temporal
sequences of data are co-registered and analyzed, there is a concomitant explosion of
ideas and processes that deal with synthesis of different data types. The authors review
data sets of both cartographic and remote sensing origin, providing an assessment of
availability. The remote sensing information is reviewed at high (< 10 meter pixels),
moderate (30 to 100 meter) and low resolution with several examples given with URLs.
Several, such as the US Coral Reef Taskforce mapping and the Nature Conservancy,
are custom-designed for coastal management applications. The authors assess the
analytical challenges for data synthesis, which include problems with misregistration of
different data types, various resolutions combined in a single product, and new analysis
challenges associated with differences between raster and vector data sets.
Development of second generation image analysis tools, such as object-oriented
classification, have been able to address some of these issues. Another issue is
accessibility to information with problems that range from inappropriate spatial data
analysis before archiving and distribution (e.g. every pixel being a polygon) to legal
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the reef as a food resource. A local fisherman may be quite aware of the long-term
damage that pipe bombing does, but his first priority is to get food for his family’s
dinner. The authors note the impact of the ‘digital divide’ between the local
community and aid organizations. A remote sensing product cannot be ‘parachuted’ in
with an expectation for a change in behavior that the ‘educated’ organization is
advocating. An approach based upon ‘design with culture’ that involves the
community from the formative stages is discussed. Effective communication is a
critical component. In the instance when a group may not respond to a map because
their tradition is to list things, not to spatially orient things, other approaches, such as
story telling, may be more effective. The authors note that: “Being attentive to local
traditions, knowledge, and beliefs provides significant benefits, as the local people:
• are directly aware of the current status of the marine resource on which they
depend
• possess an inherent temporal knowledge of patterns within and changes to the
marine environment
• are valuable resources for developing monitoring and managing strategies.
It is also important to be aware of the challenges that accompany local knowledge and
the limitations of local knowledge’s usefulness, which may include:
• the local knowledge is contained in a verbal medium and is often unverified
• the attitudes of local people towards their resource may not include a
conservation outlook (which can discourage proper management plans)
• the local knowledge is exclusive to the area, with minimal overlap between
regions within small spatial proximities
• the variability of human and physical events from one shallow coastal water
environment to another may prevent the incorporation of an approach that was
deemed successful elsewhere.” (Newman et al., Chapter 11, this book).
In Chapter 12, Robinson et al., address the issue of data synthesis. With the
explosion in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) which include layers of digital
maps, data fusion which includes integration of many different data types to distill more
meaningful data, and change detection techniques whereby typically temporal
sequences of data are co-registered and analyzed, there is a concomitant explosion of
ideas and processes that deal with synthesis of different data types. The authors review
data sets of both cartographic and remote sensing origin, providing an assessment of
availability. The remote sensing information is reviewed at high (< 10 meter pixels),
moderate (30 to 100 meter) and low resolution with several examples given with URLs.
Several, such as the US Coral Reef Taskforce mapping and the Nature Conservancy,
are custom-designed for coastal management applications. The authors assess the
analytical challenges for data synthesis, which include problems with misregistration of
different data types, various resolutions combined in a single product, and new analysis
challenges associated with differences between raster and vector data sets.
Development of second generation image analysis tools, such as object-oriented
classification, have been able to address some of these issues. Another issue is
accessibility to information with problems that range from inappropriate spatial data
analysis before archiving and distribution (e.g. every pixel being a polygon) to legal
314
LeDrew and Richardson