GOM Seagrass CoP

Gulf of Mexico Seagrass Community of Practice

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Seagrass Community of Practice (CoP) was created to support the management, research, restoration, and conservation of seagrasses in the GOM. The intent of the GOM Seagrass CoP is to facilitate collaboration and coordination among seagrass experts and practitioners to connect seagrass monitoring, mapping, research, and management efforts; share and leverage resources and information; and compile and implement best practices recommendations. Seagrasses have been particularly impacted by the degradation of coastal waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Current and past assessments of the health, stability, and well-being of the northern Gulf of Mexico supports the need for a comprehensive collection, collation, and update of existing seagrass data. The seagrass research and management community has long recognized a need for comparable monitoring and health assessment data across the Gulf of Mexico. To meet this need, the CoP has the following goals and objectives.

Goals:

  • Facilitate information exchange and maximize collaboration potential by providing a mechanism for connecting experts and practitioners throughout the Gulf of Mexico. This includes a broadcast email address and a spreadsheet of contacts with affiliations, and areas of expertise.

  • Improve advocacy efforts for seagrass mapping/monitoring

Objectives:

  •  Take advantage of efficiencies by providing information on current or planned activities that would allow others to collaborate or benefit from project outputs, especially new data collections.

  • Foster application of appropriate mapping/monitoring technologies. This would include strengths, weaknesses, skill requirements, private sector vendors, and general costs or drivers of costs.

  • Optimize data quality by serving as a location for best practices manuals and documents related to mapping/monitoring.

  • Provide access to relevant grey literature, reports, and other documents outside the traditional journal publications.

  • Provide input to managers, restoration officials, and other coastal resource managers on implementation and application of the outputs from monitoring, mapping, and data synthesis efforts.

2020 Status & Trends Update

Link to Documents - The 2020 Seagrass Status and Trends in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: 2002-2017 update by Lawrence Handley and Catherine Lockwood documents the status of seagrasses in the Northern Gulf of Mexico and provides trends in distribution and extent of occurrence. All data utilized to determine a baseline is from Tier 1 inventories collected across the Northern Gulf of Mexico and divides the northern Gulf coast into the five Gulf states and further sub-divides the coast into fourteen estuarine systems. A comparison of the five Gulf states for seagrass gains ...

2007 Status & Trends

Link to Documents -  The 2007 Seagrass Status and Trends in the Northern Gulf of Mexico:1940-2002 edited by L. Handley, D. Altsman, and R. DeMay provides scientists, managers, and citizens with valuable baseline information on the status and trends of seagrasses in coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Fourteen individual estuarine systems where seagrasses occur, as well as statewide summaries for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, are examined. Each estuarine system is detailed in vignettes that address current and historical extent and quality of seagrasses, seagrass mapping and monitoring, causes of status change, restoration and enhancement activities, background information for the entire study area as well as the subareas for study, and the methodology employed to analyze and document the historical trends and current status of seagrasses. 

 

Alabama seagrass project

The Alabama Seagrass Pilot Project will assist and inform the development of Gulf-wide Seagrass monitoring, assessment, and reporting standards and protocols for multiple scales. The Pilot Project can be used to facilitate technology transfer and the dissemination of products, lessons learned, and other materials for Seagrass restoration practitioners.
Mission: Gain consistency in Seagrass Monitoring for the Gulf of Mexico   Goal: Use the Alabama Pilot project as a model for seagrass monitoring in the Gulf of Mexico.   Objectives: •   Refine the Tier Approach: Tier 1 and Tier 2 implementation in seagrass monitoring using the Alabama Pilot Project. •   Formulate a system for data acquisitions, populating, distributions, and analysis of seagrasses and related data for the Alabama Pilot Project. •   Provide high-quality data to state and federal partners in Mobile Bay. The Pilot Project can be used to provide an opportunity to demonstrate best practices for Seagrass mapping and monitoring. These best practices could then be applied to Seagrass mapping and monitoring efforts across the Gulf of Mexico.