Marine Protected Areas (MPA) provide coastal resource managers with a valuable tool for the conservation of marine resources. Geographic information system (GIS) technology has the capacity to play an integral support role in the designation and management of MPAs. This module introduces students to the MPA initiative currently under way within NOAA and other federal agencies, and provides information on the tools and methods that can be utilized to create a GIS analysis. Many of the exercises within this module are small group activities. In the first exercise, students brainstorm potential sources of data that could be used to perform a coastal GIS analysis. This exercise is followed by a second small group activity in which students develop a flowchart of the analysis that they perform in the third exercise. This final exercise involves the creation of a process-based GIS model using the ModelBuilder module.
At the conclusion of this module, students will be able to: