World Seagrass Conference 2022 & the 14th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (WSC2022 & ISBW14) were held in Annapolis, Maryland, USA on 7-12 August 2022. Dr. Genki Terauchi, the senior researcher of the Northwest Pacific Action Plan’s Special Monitoring & Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Activity Centre (NOWPAP CEARAC), joined the conference to introduce Seagrass Mapper which CEARAC originally developed in the 2020-2021 biennium to map the distribution of eelgrasses in the NOWPAP region.
WSC & ISBW is a biennial conference organized by the World Seagrass Association. The event held in Annapolis was originally planned for 2020; however, because of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, it was postponed to 2022. Also, the meeting allowed hybrid participation: in-person in general and virtual if necessary.
ISBW14 covered a range of topics from biological aspects of seagrass and its surrounding environment to monitoring mapping efforts. Dr. Terauchi virtually organized a session to introduce Seagrass Mapper, a Google Earth Engine-based web tool for mapping seagrass on 12 August, with Mr. Xuan Truong Trinh of the University of Tokyo who participated on site. Sixty-five people attended the session and learned how to prepare training data using field-based information and the procedure of analyzing satellite images for mapping.
For more information, please visit the NOWPAP Remote Sensing Training Program website https://nowpap-remote-sensing-training.org/npwd/ and WSC2022 & ISBW14 website: https://isbw14.org/.
