Background

At the present time, there are no analytical tools with which to predict the distribution of marine mammals at spatial and temporal scales of relevance to U.S. Navy training exercises.  The Navy must be able to conduct such exercises to maintain readiness, while avoiding situations that may cause adverse effects to marine mammals. The analytical framework to be developed will facilitate more appropriate modeling approaches for the scales required to support the marine mammal forecasting needs of the Navy.

Objective

The objectives of this project are to: (1) develop and test the robustness of existing and novel spatio-temporal models of marine mammal distribution, as predicted by physical conditions of the marine environment; (2) design a novel, hierarchical framework for analyzing marine mammal distributions across annual, seasonal and synoptic timeframes; and (3) assemble a spatial decision support system that allows Navy users to analyze model outputs and ancillary oceanographic data across multiple forecasting timescales.

Process/Technology Description

Spatially explicit statistical techniques will be used to determine how features of the physical habitat influence the distribution of marine mammals.  A subset of both traditional and novel statistical model approaches will be evaluated to determine which are most robust in understanding marine
mammal habitats under different oceanographic conditions and data limitations. The tests will be structured by the spatial and temporal constraints of the observational and environmental data, the taxonomic group of marine mammals evaluated, and the geographic regions assessed.  These approaches provide a flexible framework for spatio-temporal data, which is highly appropriate for modeling multi-scale and multi-temporal ecological processes. An analytical toolbox will be developed for the compilation and analysis of relevant habitat/mammal survey data that synthesizes statistical model results into products describing the predicted distribution of cetaceans.

Expected Benefits

The Spatial Decision Support System will provide the Navy with state-of-the-art tools to predict the distribution of marine mammals from readily measurable environmental parameters. This will allow the Navy to develop and implement improved mitigation procedures to protect marine mammals without compromising realistic training exercises.(Anticipated Project Completion - 2007)

Email Lists

You may be interested in joining one of our email lists:

• serdp - internal discussion list for SERDP
• serdp-users - Naval users of SERDP products
• serdp-announce - publicly subscribable announcements for SERDP
• serdp-all: serdp + serdp-users + serdp-announce; an unsubscribable list for sending out general information to all lists

Links

• OBIS-SEAMAP - the online archive of marine mammal, bird and turtle data which will feed biological data into the SERDP analysis
• NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center - the collaborating institution awarded a similar SERDP grant (CS-1390) with an emphasis on the Pacific Ocean and in-situ environmental data, versus Duke's emphasis on the Atlantic Ocean using remotely-sensed environmental data
• Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) - the sponsoring organization