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As NASA pursues its mission to better understand and protect our home planet, our focus is often on the world's oceans and coastal areas. As a leader in innovative space technology, climate research, and analysis of global data sets encompassing the interconnected Earth system, NASA also works to build partnerships to bring new knowledge to bear on critical challenges facing our planet today and in the future, from climate change preparedness to natural resource management and the impact of extreme weather events.
Monitoring Marine Biodiversity
In October 2014, NASA, NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced plans to fund three demonstration projects that will lay the foundation for the first national network to monitor marine biodiversity at scales ranging from microbes to whales.
Despite the wide breadth of marine biodiversity and the wealth of ecosystem services we receive from our seas, there are many gaps in our knowledge of marine ecosystems and how life in them is changing over time. To help fill these gaps, NASA and its partners sought proposals to develop demonstration marine biodiversity networks around the United States. The projects selected will demonstrate how a national operational marine biodiversity observation network could be assembled. Such a network would serve as a marine resource management tool to conserve existing biodiversity and enhance U.S. biosecurity against threats such as invasive species and infectious agents.
The three demonstration marine biological observation networks will be established in four locations: the Florida Keys; Monterey Bay and the Santa Barbara Channel in California; and on the continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.
Marine biodiversity is a key indicator of ocean health and critical to sustaining natural resources, such as fisheries. The three projects will be established in different marine environments in U.S. waters to integrate existing observations, ranging from satellite observations to DNA sampling, and to fill data gaps with new observations. This joint effort supports the U.S. National Ocean Policy to "protect, maintain, and restore the health and biological diversity of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources." An integrated picture of what is happening to marine biodiversity enhances the ability of policy makers and natural resource managers to devise effective strategies to address ecosystem threats from pollution and climate change.