Leveraging earth observation data at the science-society interface: tools to help countries monitor and mitigate marine pollution

Abstract:

Through the creation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 target 14.1, the United Nations established a charge for countries to "by 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution". Marine pollution is a complex challenge that requires environmental data from across the land-sea and science-society interfaces in order to meet the SDG target 14.1. Meeting water management demands also requires innovative uses of existing data and clear communication between data providers and decision makers. In order to support the integration of required Earth Observation data for SDG target 14.1, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Blue Planet Initiative collaborated with the UN Environment Programme on the formal methodology reporting on SDG target 14.1 and is partnering with industry and decision-makers to integrate data sets and visualize information in a way that supports informed and timely decision making. This talk will provide an overview on GEO Blue Planet’s efforts to integrate data and support cross-disciplinary collaborations to support implementation of SDG 14.1. The talk will focus on efforts related to SDG 14.1.1a - Index of Coastal Eutrophication. Activities to be discussed include the process for developing sub-indicators for the methodology to support the many countries that do not have in-situ nutrient data to assess eutrophication, a collaboration with Esri to visualize Earth Observation data and information related to eutrophication, the plan to develop a toolkit for further guidance, train data users, and develop use cases for these tools, and the potential for Artificial Intelligence to develop a new indicator for coastal eutrophication.