Take a deeper dive into marine reserves’ monitoring data from the comfort of your home!
We are excited to announce the release of our new ODFW Marine Reserves Program Data Dashboard. The dashboard is a website that allows you to use simple-drop down menus to navigate through data ODFW has collected over the last ten years, across Oregon’s marine reserves and their comparison areas. The dashboard focuses on the data collected using our core ecological monitoring tools. These data are considered preliminary and for exploratory purposes. We invite you to explore with us as we begin to investigate nearshore ocean trends and natural variation of different species at each reserve.
Oregon’s five marine reserves differ in their size, spatial configuration, habitats, and past fishing pressure – important characteristics that influence ecological responses to reserve protections. As you explore the dashboard, note how each reserve is a case study that provides an opportunity to learn how unique site characteristics elicit different ecological changes and conservation outcomes over time.
Also because of these unique site characteristics, we’ve had to employ different study designs and combinations of monitoring tools at each site to adequately sample the marine communities present. We hope this dashboard helps you better understand the data being collected at each site.
As our program continues working on analyses and a more formal summary of data, beyond what’s already available in past reports and publications, we hope that this dashboard complements our efforts in a fun and approachable way. Data management and analysis are on-going and therefore data may be updated or modified at any time on the dashboard.
So from the comfort of your own home, don your mask and snorkel and dive into the data with us to explore Oregon’s marine reserves!
Questions regarding the ODFW Data Dashboard? Please contact Ryan Fields at ryan.t.fields@state.or.us.