Experts from the Northwest Pacific region and partners gathered at the 18th Focal Points Meeting of the Special Monitoring and Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Activity Centre (CEARAC) of the Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP) on 24-25 August 2021 to review the progress in monitoring and assessment of the coastal environment in the NOWPAP region.
The meeting reviewed the implementation of activities related to marine biodiversity, seagrass beds, coastal eutrophication, and marine litter, and other thematic areas according to the priorities of the NOWPAP Medium-term strategy (2018-2013). The major points of discussion are summarised below:
- CEARAC develops digital maps of the distribution of tidal flats and salt marshes in the NOWPAP region using a global tidal flat mapping tool, Global Intertidal Change (GIC), developed by the James Cook University of Australia, to understand the status and the historical change of these coastal habitats. A special focus of the meeting was how to improve the accuracy of mapping and the necessity of referring to different evaluation methods.
- The CEARAC Secretariat developed a website on harmful algal blooms (HABs) more than ten years ago. In 2021, the Secretariat collected recent information and scientific papers and reports on HABs and the "red tide" occurrences. The meeting requested the Member States to nominate experts to review the collected information and collect additional information.
- Based on the previous assessment of seagrass distribution in selected sea areas in the NOWPAP region with satellite images, CEARAC has been conducting case studies of estimating seagrass blue carbon in the NOWPAP region. The research will help prompt seagrass conservation by visualising the value of seagrass blue carbon through quantitative assessment. The meeting suggested finding a way to disseminate the result of the work.
- With regard to improving the NOWPAP Eutrophication Assessment Tool (NEAT) for monitoring and assessing eutrophication using satellite-derived chlorophyll-a, an online match-up tool has been developed to evaluate satellite-derived data against in-situ data collected by national experts in the NOWPAP member states. An expert meeting on eutrophication will be held to review the analysis results and recommend concrete ways of updating the satellite-derived chlorophyll-a of longer time series by including new sensors.
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a planned training course on environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has been cancelled. The meeting suggested developing video manuals and organising an online seminar instead of a face-to-face workshop.
- CEARAC will organise a training course on the latest techniques for analysing and interpreting satellite data to assess the state of the coastal environment. A webinar website will be constructed under the Marine Environmental Watch Project website. The webinar will be held at the end of 2021.
At the end of the meeting, participants agreed to the following projects proposed for implementation in the 2022-2023 biennium:
- Implementation of pilot studies at significant tidal flats in the NOWPAP region
- Organisation of the first e-DNA training course
- Update of Cochlodinium website
- Construction of a seagrass blue carbon network in the NOWPAP region
- Development of a cloud-based bio-optical database for satellite water quality monitoring in NOWPAP coastal waters
- Development of the remote sensing data analysis training programs and organisation of training courses
