One of the priorities identified by the five Gulf states is data and monitoring. The Data and Monitoring Team focuses on: observations and monitoring, data access and acquisition, tool maintenance for all GOMA Teams, the Master Mapping Plan, performance measures, and the Gulf Report Card.

The Team has two goals:

  • Improve decision making through coordination and provide guidance for monitoring, mapping, and data sharing collaborations
  • Enable data and monitoring integration to support Alliance priorities

The GOMA Data and Monitoring Team is led by the State of Florida, but has active participation from all five Gulf States and federal agencies working in the region, as well as academia, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Learn more about the Team’s focus areas and actions in Action Plan III.

The Data and Monitoring Team meets quarterly via conference call and hosts 1-2 in-person meetings per year. The team coordinator handles logistics (meeting agendas, notes, and facilitation).

2018 Workshop

The Data and Monitoring Team is hosting a workshop in conjunction with the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill & Ecosystem Science Conference. The Habitat Mapping workshop will be Monday, February 5, 2018. You do not need to register for the conference to attend. This year the Team hopes to develop a conceptual model for alignment of the many mapping efforts already ongoing or funded for the near term. One significant element of this is the RESTORE Council-funded Council Monitoring and Assessment Program that will be ramping up efforts to develop a Gulf-wide inventory of mapping data in the coming months. In parallel, this program will establish a stakeholder-based Community of Practice who will identify gaps in coverage and priority areas for future mapping, among other things. State, federal, academic, and NGO entities have a significant role to play in getting existing data into the inventory and in ensuring optimal value of the products that come out of the process. Part of the workshop time will be devoted to understanding this give and take, and mapping out the integration points. For more information about this meeting contact the Team’s coordinator.

2018 Team Meeting – Mapping Summit

The Team will be hosting a meeting April 3-5, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama at the NOAA Disaster Response Center. This will be a joint Council Monitoring and Assessment Program and Gulf Mapping Summit.  This mapping summit compliments the Team’s master mapping plan focus area as a point of interest. Stay tuned for more information in early 2018 or contact the Team’s coordinator for more information.

Funding Opportunity

None at this time.

New! Gulf Star 2017 Award

  • Monitoring and Metadata Catalog | University of South Florida Water Institute Expanding an intuitive and interactive online mapping interface used to catalog monitoring sites and management areas, this project expands the current Florida-focused Terra-CAT and Water-CAT platforms to Alabama, with a vision of growing to cover the entire Gulf region.
  • Living Shorelines Data Inventory, Gap Analysis, and Geodatabase | Gulf Coast Research LabTo enhance the success of current and future living shoreline projects, this project identifies existing shoreline habitat datasets across the Gulf states and gaps in coverage.  The results will be accessible in a publically-available geodatabase.

Gulf Star 2016 Award

  • Updating and Upgrading GOMAportal |  Harte Research InstituteThis project updates and upgrades the GOMAportal (www.gomaportal.org) to better support new metadata standards and interoperability, relocate the entire system to a new server with more storage capacity, and enhances the interface to be more user-friendly.

Team Tools and Publications

  • Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics (STICS) - View demographic, economic, and recreation data for the Gulf of Mexico or to download the NOAA report Population Trends Along the Coastal United States.
  • National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP) - Established in 1999, the National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP) provides a full range of the most current economic and socio-economic information available on changes and trends along the U.S. coast and in coastal waters.
  • Gulf of Mexico Data Atlas - An online regional collaboration resulting in assessments of the physical environment, marine resources, and economic activity around the Gulf.
  • Gulf of Mexico Data Acquisition Planning Tool (GDAPT) - A platform that allows Gulf of Mexico stakeholders to plan and coordinate data acquisition activities by linking planned acquisition information to graphics representing the extent of the acquisition within a map-based interface.
  • Metadata Transforms - Extensible Markup Language (XML) transformations available to automate the metadata translation and can be developed to automate metadata creation.
  • Ecowatch - A data management infrastructure that is comprised of data services and support functions for data discovery.

Team Co-Chairs

  • Dave Reed, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
  • Stephanie Erickson, Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Team Coordinator

Team Meeting Information

  • Contact your coordinator for any meeting notes or presentations.