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May 16, 2013
Aloha from PacIOOS,
This newsletter is second consecutive newsletter dedicated to showcasing the newest data overlays and functionalities in the PacIOOS Voyager. For more information on all of the layers or functions described below, please see our Voyager News page. For an online tutorial on how to use Voyager, please click here.
New Data Overlays in PacIOOS Voyager
Hawaii Beach Water Quality Monitoring
Hawai'i Beach Water Quality Monitoring
Hawai'i Beach Water Quality Monitoring 
 Voyager's "water quality" category now includes an overlay of coastal water quality measurements sampled by the Beach Monitoring Quality Assurance Program of the State of Hawaiʻi Department of Health (DOH) Clean Water Branch (CWB). Measurements of bacteria levels (Enterococcus and Clostridium perfingens) are used to assess water quality. These and other water measurements (water temperature, salinity, turbidity, pH, and dissolved oxygen) are collected periodically at beaches throughout the state.
Mariana 
Islands


 
 
Maui Beach Safety
Maui Beach Safety
Hawai'i Beach Safety

An overlay of nearshore and offshore safety conditions has been added to Voyager's "hazards" category based on the popular Hawaiʻi Beach Safety website. This provides Hawaiʻi beach users with timely and accurate information for choosing a beach destination appropriate to their ocean skill level.

Three signs are employed to rate Hawaiʻi's life-guarded beaches: Caution, High Hazard, and Extreme Hazard.  

 

Hawaiʻi Beach Safety was established through cooperation between the Hawaiʻi Lifeguard Association, City & County of Honolulu, County of Maui, Hawaiʻi Department of Health, Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, and the University of Hawaiʻi School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) as a non-profit venture.

For more information, please visit: http://www.hawaiibeachsafety.org.  


Tiger Shark Distribution
Tiger Shark Distribution
Spatial Distribution of Tagged Tiger Sharks

Voyager's "fish & wildlife" category now includes a spatial distribution map for tiger sharks in Hawaiʻi. This overlay represents the aggregated locations of twelve individual sharks tagged with sensors whose positions were communicated via satellite and tracked over time: five from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2006 and seven from the Main Hawaiian Islands in 2009. New data from other deployments  will be added as it becomes available to supplement the existing overlay.


PacIOOS supports researchers at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa to deploy satellite tags on tiger sharks to track their movements. For more information, please visit Carl Meyer and Kim Holland's Shark Research page at HIMB. 

Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity

Thanks to updates at NOAA OceanWatch, Voyager now provides weekly and monthly global sea surface salinity from NASA's Aquarius mission. Aquarius was launched aboard the SAC-D satellite on June 10, 2011. Data are available at one-degree (1�) spatial resolution for the period August 26, 2011 to the present.  

Historically, salinity has been sparsely detected at sea, limited mostly to summertime observations in shipping lanes. Utilizing spaceborne passive microwave radiometry, Aquarius provides the first global observations of sea surface salinity, covering Earth's surface once every 7 days. Over its mission, it will collect as many sea surface salinity measurements as the entire 125-year historical record from ships and buoys. 

 

Spatial Distribution of Coral Reefs
Coral Reef Distribution for Pohnpei, FSM
Spatial Distribution of Coral Reefs
Voyager's "fish & wildlife" category now includes a global spatial distribution map for coral reefs. Compiled in 2010 from numerous data sources by UNEP-WCMC and the  WorldFish Center in collaboration with the World Resources Institute and The Nature Conservancy, this is the highest resolution global coral reef dataset to date; the majority (85%) of the data mapped at 30-meter resolution. Clicking on a reef polygon within Voyager produces a pop-up with further information, such as type of reef (barrier, fringe, patch, shelf, etc.) as well as location name.

PacIOOS generated a Web Map Service (WMS) from the UNEP-WCMC Shapefile. This interoperable Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard will help users to incorporate map imagery of this layer into other mapping applications.
PacIOOS
Based within the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, PacIOOS is the Pacific Islands regional component of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS�).  PacIOOS is a partnership of data providers and users working together to enhance ocean observations and develop, disseminate, evaluate, and apply ocean data and information products designed to address the environmental, economic, and public safety needs of stakeholders who call the Pacific Islands home.  For more information on PacIOOS, please visit www.pacioos.org. 
PacIOOS | 808-956-6556 | melissa.iwamoto@hawaii.edu | www.pacioos.org
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