University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts 2014 The orC al Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management Annick Cros The Nature Conservancy Nurulhuda Ahamad Fatan WorldFish Centre Alan White The Nature Conservancy Shwu Jiau Teoh WorldFish Centre Stanley Tan WorldFish Centre See next page for additional authors Publication Details Cros, A., Fatan, N. Ahamad., White, A., Teoh, S. Jiau., Tan, S., Handayani, C., Huang, C., Peterson, N., Li, R. Venegas., Siry, H. Yusran., Fitriana, R., Gove, J., Acoba, T., Knight, M., Acosta, R., Andrew, N. & Beare, D. (2014). The orC al Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management. PLoS One, 9 (6), e96332-1-e96332-7. Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] The orC al Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management Abstract In this paper we describe the construction of an online GIS database system, hosted by WorldFish, which stores bio-physical, ecological and socio-economic data for the 'Coral Triangle Area' in South-east Asia and the Pacific. The ad tabase has been built in partnership with all six (Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) of the Coral Triangle countries, and represents a valuable source of information for natural resource managers at the regional scale. Its utility is demonstrated using biophysical data, data summarising marine habitats, and data describing the extent of marine protected areas in the region. Keywords improving, coral, management, triangle, atlas:, reef, integrated, system, online, spatial, database Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details Cros, A., Fatan, N. Ahamad., White, A., Teoh, S. Jiau., Tan, S., Handayani, C., Huang, C., Peterson, N., Li, R. Venegas., Siry, H. Yusran., Fitriana, R., Gove, J., Acoba, T., Knight, M., Acosta, R., Andrew, N. & Beare, D. (2014). The orC al Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management. PLoS One, 9 (6), e96332-1-e96332-7. Authors Annick Cros, Nurulhuda Ahamad Fatan, Alan White, Shwu Jiau Teoh, Stanley Tan, Christian Handayani, Charles Huang, Nate Peterson, Ruben Venegas Li, Hendra Yusran Siry, Ria Fitriana, Jamison Gove, Tomoko Acoba, Maurice Knight, Renerio Acosta, Neil L. Andrew, and Doug Beare This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/3275 The Coral Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management Annick Cros1, Nurulhuda Ahamad Fatan2, Alan White1, Shwu Jiau Teoh2, Stanley Tan2, Christian Handayani3, Charles Huang4, Nate Peterson5, Ruben Venegas Li2, Hendra Yusran Siry6, Ria Fitriana7, Jamison Gove8, Tomoko Acoba8, Maurice Knight9, Renerio Acosta10, Neil Andrew2, Doug Beare2* 1 Indo-Pacific Division, The Nature Conservancy, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, 2 Natural Resources Management, Worldfish, Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia, 3 Coral Triangle Program, WWF-Indonesia, South Jakarta, Indonesia, 4 Coral Triangle Program, WWF-United States, Washington, DC, United States, 5 Indo-Pacific Division, The Nature Conservancy, Queensland, Australia, 6 Coordination and External Affairs, Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs and Food Security, Jakarta, Indonesia, 7 The Coral Triangle Center, Bali, Indonesia, 8 Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, 9 Coral Triangle Support Partnership, WWF-Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia, 10 Regional Environment Office, United States Agency for International Development Regional Development Mission for Asia, Bangkok, Thailand Abstract In this paper we describe the construction of an online GIS database system, hosted by WorldFish, which stores bio-physical, ecological and socio-economic data for the ‘Coral Triangle Area’ in South-east Asia and the Pacific. The database has been built in partnership with all six (Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) of the Coral Triangle countries, and represents a valuable source of information for natural resource managers at the regional scale. Its utility is demonstrated using biophysical data, data summarising marine habitats, and data describing the extent of marine protected areas in the region. Citation: Cros A, Ahamad Fatan N, White A, Teoh SJ, Tan S, et al. (2014) The Coral Triangle Atlas: An Integrated Online Spatial Database System for Improving Coral Reef Management. PLoS ONE 9(6): e96332. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096332 Editor: Fabiano Thompson, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Received January 3, 2014; Accepted April 7, 2014; Published June 18, 2014 Copyright: ß 2014 Cros et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The CT Atlas (http://ctatlas.reefbase.org) was developed as a partnership between WorldFish, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The design and development of the CT Atlas was supported primarily by the U.S. Government through the 5-year (2009–2013) Coral Triangle Support Partnership (CTSP) in cooperation with other implementing partners of the US Coral Triangle Support Program (USCTI). The production of the current manuscript was also supported by the CGIAR Research Programs on: Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); and Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * Email: [email protected] Introduction Overfishing threatens the food security of its coastal communities [7], mangroves are being cleared for firewood, aquaculture and The Coral Triangle (CT) is located in South-east Asia and the hotels, while the corals themselves are under threat from Pacific, and encompasses the beautiful, tropical marine waters of increasing sea temperatures [8,9], sea level rise and ocean Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon acidification [10]. Lack of effective marine spatial plans, and Islands and Timor-Leste (The CT6, Fig. 1). It is recognized by the uncontrolled coastal development are the main threats to the scientific community as the global centre of marine biological Coral Triangle’s reefs. species diversity supporting [1,2], for example, more than 605 The area is particularly difficult to manage, however, because it species of reef-building corals; 15 of which are regional endemics falls under the remit of six national jurisdictions and many more [3]. This amounts to 76% of the global total species complement sub-national jurisdictions and governance processes. In recognis- of corals, giving it the world’s highest conservation priority [4]. It is ing this fundamental problem, the leaders of all six countries in the estimated that more than 395 million people live in the Coral Coral Triangle (CT6) region came together to form the Coral Triangle, 130 million of which directly depend on these resources Triangle Initiative for Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security for their livelihoods and well-being. Dependency on coastal and (CTI-CFF). Its express purpose is to safeguard the livelihoods of marine resources is especially true for those living in coastal the communities that depend on its coastal resources: a key communities [5] where, in some cases, up to 90% of protein uptake can be from fish [6]. The area attracts millions of tourists component of which is how to manage the exploitation of these each year who take advantage of its pristine marine parks, nature resources sustainably. reserves, famous dive sites, and beaches. The area is also an The CTI-CFF, which was originally promoted by the President important nursery ground for both fish, and shellfish, which in of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is clearly an important turn support valuable commercial fisheries. The Coral Triangle is step towards more effective management and conservation of the currently facing diverse threats connected with rapidly growing Coral Triangle area. The CTI-CFF is an inter-governmental human populations, and associated economic development. Agreement among the six Coral Triangle countries that is based on a PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e96332 The Coral Triangle Atlas for Coral Reef Management ing the CTI-CFF. Ultimately this will enhance the credibility of the CT Atlas among relevant managers, scientists and policy makers in the region, leading to improved conservation and management of its natural resources. Methods Technical specifications The CT Atlas website is hosted by ReefBase (http://www. reefbase.org) in a ‘cloud’ service provided by Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2). It uses Microsoft ASP.NET web application framework as the ‘web development tool’ with Microsoft’s SQL Server as the backend database.