Hubble witnesses a cosmic tug of war

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Hubble witnesses a cosmic tug of war (picture)

ReefBase: Improving coral reef management and securing livelihoods in Asia Pacific

ReefBase:
Improving coral reef management and securing livelihoods in Asia Pacific

WorldFish's ReefBase ( www.reefbase.org ) is the world's largest repository of information on coral reefs. The website is a dynamic resource with quality information on the location, status, threats and management of coral reefs in nearly 100 countries and territories, and is therefore a valuable tool for managers, policy makers, researchers, conservationists, educators and students.

ReefBase, which has dedicated staff and resource, was developed in collaboration with the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN). The first online version was launched in April 2002. A new and more powerful version came onstream in August 2003, providing better access to more information.

ICRAN is a global partnership of coral reef experts working to arrest and reverse the decline of the world's coral reefs. It was launched in 2000 with funding from the United Nations Foundation. WorldFish is a major partner in this initiative.

ReefBase is the central repository for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. This impressive collaboration brings together people, governments, institutes and non-governmental organizations monitoring coral reefs and the communities that rely on them in over 80 countries. The GCRMN is hosted jointly by WorldFish and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, the World Bank, and the United Nations Environment Program are among its sponsors.

Since being online in 2002, ReefBase has developed an easy-to-use Geographic Information System (GIS) that allows users to view coral reef data on state-of-the-art interactive maps. This includes information on marine protected areas and monitoring sites.

Coral bleaching continues to increase due to warming waters. ReefBase is developing extensive information on bleaching events in collaboration with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The information is combined in the GIS with monthly updated maps of ocean temperatures around the world, providing an early warning system for this dreaded phenomenon.

A sound understanding of communities and how they use coastal resources is critical for effective management. ReefBase will also work closely with NOAA to develop important socioeconomic information to help managers identify potential problems and the best management strategies. Currently, such information is limited and poorly organized.

Partnerships have also been developed with the Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean Project and Reef Check to strengthen information sharing with monitoring programs around the world.

ReefBase has also helped the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project (COREMAP) develop a web-based GIS in Indonesia , home to the largest coral reef area in the world. This is part of efforts to help local managers and scientists develop proper databases and management systems. COREMAP is funded in part by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Looking ahead, ReefBase is preparing thematic CD-ROMs on coral reef issues, and a regional coral reef information system for the Pacific based out of the WorldFish office in New Caledonia (ReefBase Pacific) is planned for 2005.

ReefBase is an important part of WorldFish's strategy to improve coral reef management and so secure and sustain the livelihoods of the poor who depend on it.

Coral reefs can provide food, income, coastal protection and building materials. Some 500 million people who live in the tropics have some dependence on reefs. Reefs have been estimated to provide the world with US$375 billion in goods and services.

Further, up to 50 per cent of chemicals for new drugs come from the sea, many of which come from reef organisms. They could be a goldmine for novel chemicals and powerful new drugs, given the richness of life on reefs and the fact that species have evolved several tricks to survive the rigors of the marine environment.

Many invertebrate animals produce chemicals that make them taste bad or toxic to predators. These compounds can be very attractive to drug companies. Reefs rival rainforests in their biodiversity. Because about 90 per cent of the species are unknown, there is a very high likelihood that there are untapped biomedical resources.

But the economic and other benefits of these resources are being depleted as a result of reef degradation. The global coastal zone is most stressed place on the planet, and the majority of the world's reefs are under imminent threat. In Southeast Asia alone, which accounts for over 30 per cent of the world's reefs, some 88 per cent of all reefs are at risk.

The chief causes of coral reef degradation are overexploitation of fisheries, pollution, excess sediments from deforestation, rock mining, and bleaching due to global warming.

Coral Reef Facts

Coral Reef Facts:

"Coral reefs are in crisis, dying at an अलार्मिंग rate worldwide।

An estimated 25% of coral reefs have already disappeared and an estimated two-thirds of all coral reefs are at risk today.[1]

An estimated 88% of the reefs in Southeast Asia - the most species rich reefs on earth - are at risk.[1]

Since 1975, more than 90% of the reefs in the Florida Keys have lost their living coral cover (study by Dr. Phil Dustan).

Threats to the world's coral reefs include:
- Pollution
- Disease
- Over-fishing
- Dynamite and cyanide fishing
- Sedimentation
- Bleaching caused by rising ocean temperatures

Called the 'rainforests of the sea,' coral reefs are the greatest expression of ocean life, and the most biodiverse ecosystem on Earth with 30 of 34 known animal phyla present।


Unlike the rainforest, there is no comprehensive global baseline map of living coral reefs. This is urgently needed. A satellite mission dedicated to remote sensing of coral reefs can provide this critical global baseline."

Source : pcrf.org

Tools — Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab

Tools — Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab

The Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, directed by Patrick Halpin, applies geospatial analysis to marine ecological problems.
Here are some links to tools that The Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab has been developing।


HabMod: Habitat Modeling Toolbox — by Ben Best — last modified 2007-03-07 06:01
Formerly called ArcRstats, this toolbox produces multivariate habitat prediction rasters using ArcGIS and the open-source R statistical package for implementing classification and regression (CART), generalized linear models (GLM) and generalized additive models (GAM).

ConnMod: Connectivity Modeling Toolbox — by Ben Best — last modified 2007-03-07 06:01
This ArcGIS toolbox allows for creation of a network connecting patches of habitat using a TIN and graph-theoretic algorithms from the NetworkX Python package.

MGET: Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools — by Ben Best — last modified 2007-03-07 06:04
Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools (MGET) is a collection of software tools targeted at coastal and marine researchers and GIS analysts who work with spatially-explicit oceanographic and ecological data in scientific or managerial workflows. The initial MGET releases focus on tools useful in habitat studies, including tools for processing and sampling remotely-sensed oceanographic data and mapping and filtering ARGOS satellite telemetry. Subsequent releases will include more advanced tools presently under development at Duke's Marine Geospatial Ecology Laboratory and elsewhere.

Marine Ecosystem-Based Management Tool Innovation Fund — by Ben Best — last modified 2007-03-07 06:10
Get funding for developing your own tools! We are overseeing a two year funding initiative by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to stimulate the development and dissemination of creative software tools for Marine Ecosystem-Based Management.

MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science:

"Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"

Electrical engineering, originally taught at MIT in the Physics Department, became an independent degree program in 1882. The Department of Electrical Engineering was formed in 1902, and occupied its new home, the Lowell Building, when MIT was still located near Copley Square in Boston. The Department dedicated its present facilities in the Sherman Fairchild Electrical Engineering and Electronics complex in fall 1973, and a year later, it recognized its growing activity in computer science by changing its name to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The Department's activities in computer science, communications, and control moved into the architecturally unique and exciting Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences in Spring 2004.

The primary mission of the Department is the education of its students. Its three undergraduate programs attract more than 30 percent of all MIT undergraduates, and its doctoral programs are highly ranked and selective. A leader in cooperative education, the Department has operated the highly successful VI-A Internship Program since 1917. It has recently established a five-year Master of Engineering program, under which students stay for a fifth year and receive simultaneously a Bachelor's degree and a Master's of Engineering degree.

During its history faculty and students of the Department have made major, lasting research contributions, some of which have opened up entire new fields of study.
For more information, go to http://www.eecs.mit.edu/.

CAIDA : tools : measurement : coralreef

Status of CoralReef Suite

Version 3.7 includes many new features relative to 3.6, including:

• Can read live DAG 4 cards and DAG ERF file format



• Can concatenate tracefiles and treat the result as a single source



• Prefix-preserving anonymization with Crypto-PAn



• New perl table types



• Can read single-interface TSH files



• Can read gzipped pcap (tcpdump) files.



• New ipfilter option can bypass libpcap's sometimes broken layer 2
  parsers



• Bugfixes and portability improvements

Download

Tools and programs

Tools and programs

Below are several software package usable for the amateur and the professional.

Software for Psions

StarTrak:

StarTrak is software and database to guide a Dobsonian telescope (or any telescope with altazimuth mount). Its a freeware program for amateur astronomers. StarTrak runs on the Psion 3, 3a, 3c and 3mx range of handheld computers.
Download (41kB)
Original site www.startrak.co.uk

Astronomical clock software :

1 Xephem:

Xephem is an interactive astronomical ephemeris program for X Windows systems. For more detailed info please read the XEphem FAQ.
Download
Version 3.4 (2.32 MB) xephem_3.4.tar.gz
OS/2 Version (683 kB) (requires lesstif) xephem-os2.zip
Xephem for batch mode (166 kB) xephemb.tar.gz
German Help File (264 kB) xephem.hlp

Original site http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem

Moon Observations

1. Moon Viewer:




Download (540 kB)	moon301.zip
Original site	www.sarum.com/moonviewer.html





2. Moon Calculator:



Download (206 kB)	moonc40.zip
Original site	Have to check.