GCOOS Interactive Exhibit: EIA or “Putting the Pieces Together”

Complimentary Component to the EPA Gulf of Mexico Program CELC GOMA Priority Issue Videos

Summary of the GCOOS EOC 2011 Breakout Sessions

Take Home Messages• Seagrass beds are nurseries

– Shelter (link with EIA, habitat PITs)– Food (link with habitat PIT)– Stabilize sediment (link with habitat, coastal resilience, WQ PITs)– Promote water clarity (link with WQ, EIA, Nutrient PITs)

• What can I do to help?

(Note: PITs = Priority Issues of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance: EIA=Ecosystem Integration & Assessment; Habitats= Habitat Conservation & Restoration, WQ=Water Quality, Nutrients= Nutrients & Nutrient Impacts,

Suggestion for all CELC Exhibits

All CELCs will be using a Gulf of Mexico map as a backdrop. 1. Make the map a functional part of the exhibit by using

it as a light up board. Visitors can “click” to light up distribution areas on the map. These can include: seagrass beds, oyster habitat, marshes, coral reefs, mangroves. Other factors can also be added—light up the distribution of oil rigs, pipelines on bottom, and other economically driven uses. This would be a powerful visual tool.

2. Alternate plan if space precludes this is to incorporate a digital map with the above capabilities into the exhibit.

Levels of Information/Entry to exhibit• Level 1: What is this? Start the interactive with a simulation --something that can be stepped out of at different

levels. – Seagrass beds: Nursery/neighborhood that is a good place to live : Build a seagrass “neighborhood”

• Level 2: What affects seagrass habitats: Anthropogenic Perturbations– Interactive using nutrient data

• Level 3: What affects them: Natural Perturbations – Interactive using hurricane data. Click to send a hurricane or other “event “

• Level 4: What to do? Plant seagrass and restore (babies recolonize) or do nothing and coastal erosion allows “house” to fall into sea.

• Level 5 Make the connection to the larger ecosystem and ourselves– Show similar situation for estuaries, oyster beds, marshes, coral reefs

Level 1

• What is this? Seagrass beds are important nurseries. They allow for neighborhoods that are good places to live.

• Build a seagrass “neighborhood”:• What do you need?

– Click on the icons to add sunlight, temperature, appropriate bathymetry, nutrients, and salinity. Use sliders to get the quantities just right.

– Upon successful completion, a “Congratulations! You’ve created the perfect seagrass nursery” appears and it can rain aquatic babies to inhabit seagrass.

Level 1 Continued: WHAT DO SEAGRASSES NEED? (Click and drag to appropriate place on scale)

Light to provide energy to make their food.

Just the right amount of nutrients to use the energy from the sun to make their food (photosynthesis).

Water that is not too fresh and not too salty.

Temperature

Depth or clarity

(Each category will have an appropriate scale)

Level 1 Continued: WHAT DO SEAGRASSES NEED?

Low High

Shallow Depth High Clarity

“Congratulations! You’ve created the perfect seagrass nursery”

Animals “rain down” and inhabit seagrass habitat.

Level 2

• What affects seagrass habitats? Human component

• Two interactive games:1. Understand how nutrients enter the system

(test your knowledge game)2. Manipulate the amount of nutrients in the

system

Level 2 continued

1. Understand how nutrients enter the system: Test Your Knowledge Game• Click and drag activity to guess the major

sources of nutrients into the GOM.• Demonstrate how to read a pie chart using a

pizza analogy.

Pizza

PlainMushroomSausagePepperoni

In this example, the pizza has 8 slices.

1 (blue) slice (12.5% of the pie) is “plain”2 (red) slices (25% of the pie) are mushroom1 (green) slice (12.5% of the pie) is sausage and4 (purple) slices (50% of the pie) are pepperoni.

What are the major sources of nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico

Fertilizer from farm-ing operationsIndustrial sourcesAnimal poopResidential fertilizer useAtmosphereUpwellingOther

Visitors can be givena pie chart without labels .They will have to match each pie slice to the correct source by clickingand dragging eachcategory to the correct color slice.

Level 2

• What affects seagrass habitats? Human component

2. Manipulate the amount of nutrients in the system• Yummy…these stimulate growth; seagrasses flourish• Whoops… too much; sea grass withers, babies go away, algae grow and changes

water transparency

• Take home message: some nutrients are good...too many are not. • Can also vary other parameters (turbidity, DO, pH) and observe impact---flourish,

maintain, or die. • Use sliding scale or develop visualization tool to allow data manipulation and

captivating visual of results.

How much is too much?Select seasonal data corresponding with high WQ

• Low rainfall• Low nutrient inputs• Low mixing (wind, waves)

Select data corresponding to worse hypoxia events

• Fertilizing during rainy season

• High atm deposition• High upwelling

Fish party

Fish packing

Level 3• What affects seagrass habitats: Natural Perturbations

– Interactive using hurricane data. Click to send a hurricane through a seagrass habit. – Allow visitor to manipulate wind speed, duration, rainfall, surge. – Allow to manipulate season, moon phase/tidal cycle.– View impacts in terms of coastal resilience – Take home message: seagrasses stabilize the sediment

Level 4

• What can you do? – Do you plant seagrass and restore the habitat (babies

recolonize, ecosystem function restored) ?– Do you do nothing and allow coastal erosion to occur,

eventually resulting in the “nursery neighborhood” falling into the sea?

– We can incorporate the idea of “Environmental Hero” in this section.

– Decision game: visualize the consequences of each choice. Weigh the cost/benefit ratio.