Gulf of Mexico Alliance All-Hands Meeting
Ecosystem Integration and Assessment Priority Issue Team Agenda
Biloxi, MS
February 15th, 2012
Wednesday, February 15th
Breakfast on your own
Welcome and Meeting Overview - Larry McKinney
Larry gave a brief overview of the GOMA Alliance Coordination Team Meeting held
February 14th:
 State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit 2011, December 5-8th held in
Houston, TX, was very successful.
 A series of workshops held around the gulf will help finalize the definition
of an economically and ecologically healthy gulf and identify existing
policy frameworks where gaps exist and to prioritize restoration projects
in light of the DWH oil spill.
 State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit 2011 Web site has more information:
http://www.sgmsummit.org/
 Gulf of Mexico Report Card Initiative – see below (also a link from the
Gulf of Mexico Summit Web site)
 Gulf Restoration Task Force is working with GOMA to move their task
force forward.
 GOMRC (Gulf of Mexico Regional Collaborative) was introduced at the
Gulf Summit. This group consists of 66 research institutes gulf wide and
was put together to provide natural resource managers and policymakers
in the US and Mexico with tools to manage the Gulf’s marine and coastal
environment. More information may be found on their Web site:
http://www.gomrc.org/.
 NOAA RFP will be out soon and GOMA will be submitting one proposal
as a group. As with the last NOAA RFP, there will be two sections: Focus
Area I – Projects, Focus Area II – Coordination. GOMA will submit one
for each Focus Area with Focus Area II being exactly the same as the last
submission. Each PIT will put forth two representatives to be on the
writing team for the GOMA proposal. It was emphatically stated that the
turnaround time for submission will be quick (~4-6 weeks). The RFP will
again be centered on CMSP.
 The GOMA All Hands meeting will be June 19-21, 2012, in Corpus
Christi, TX with the EIA PIT meeting Wednesday afternoon and Thursday
morning (more information to follow when it becomes available).
Working Groups Updates - 20 minutes each

EIA Action Item 1 - The Gulf of Mexico Master Mapping Plan - Jennifer Wozencraft

Looking at planned mapping activities and identify mapping required that
is related to the Gulf Initiative.
1





Looking to incorporate feedback from users, please provide.

Using GDAPT to help harvest new mapping data

Looking to harvest mapping data from GOS and GoMRI.
EIA Action Item 2 - Data Access and Acquisition - Russ Beard

Kate Rose gave a presentation/overview of the NOAA Data Atlas. Her
presentation is attached.

Provided link to the Data Atlas: http://gulfatlas.noaa.gov/

Plans are to move the Data Atlas forward with more plates; kick off
meeting will be February 29th at Stennis Space Center, MS.
EIA Action Item 3 - Living Marine Resources - Dave Reed

Continue to update and add more studies to Dr. James Simons’ Trophic
Fish Bibliography, 746 records are available and all but 6 have been
geocoded with a shapefile and point location.

All of the FWC-FWRI metadata records (~1800) have been review and
are available in the GAME catalog.

Efforts are now focused on incorporating the FWC-FWRI SIS (Species
Information Services) Collections database into the GAME catalog. The
reference collection of fishes and invertebrates contains approximately
100,000 catalogued lots of about 5,700 species and almost 380,000 lots of
larval fishes.

Efforts are underway for the LMR stakeholder meeting to be scheduled
sometime in May, 2012 (more information to follow when it becomes
available).
EIA Action Item 4 - Emergent Wetlands Status and Trends Report - Kate Spear

The first chapter of the Emergent Wetlands Status and Trends report plus
comprehensive Literature Survey on Gulf of Mexico emergent wetlands
has been posted on their Web site
(http://gom.usgs.gov/GOMEmWetStatusTrends.aspx).

Need to update GOMA Action Item Web page with ‘public’ friendly text
and links (if available).
EIA Action Item 5 - Ecosystem Services Valuation - Cristina Carollo

All aspects of this project are on schedule.

Mustang Island Project is on schedule: (1) Map and Characterize habitats
in a barrier island system typical of Gulf coast areas (Mustang Island). (2)
Develop procedures and tools for identifying and assigning ecosystem
services (ES) to habitats and apply to a typical barrier-island system. (3)
Develop a scalable and transferable tool for valuing and mapping value of
ES.

Galveston Bay Project is on schedule and is looking at the change in
services provided by marshes over time.
2

Awarded a $650K from SeaGrant and still waiting on funds to arrive
before work can begin.

2nd Annual Ecosystem Services Workshop was held focusing on
Ecosystem Services in Restoration Activities and was a huge success. The
outcomes from the workshop are still under review before they will be
published on the Harte Web site.

Looking to host a possible organized session at the ACES (A Community
on Ecosystem Services) 2012 conference December 10-14 in Ft.
Lauderdale, FL.
Gulf of Mexico Report Card - Larry McKinney
 Larry provided a handout, “A vision for the Gulf of Mexico Report Card”, that
outlined the Report card process (link from the Gulf Summit Web site has Report
Card Prospectus).
 Partial funding for the Report Card has been through the Walton Foundation.
 Next steps for the Report Care are to discuss and decide on appropriate scale and
indicators to run the analysis. Unfortunately, only about 10 – 12 indicators will
be able to be used in the analysis.
Unscheduled presentation by Mike Carron, Director, Gulf of Mexico Research
Initiative
Mike gave an update/overview of GoMRI activities to date. His power point
presentation is attached to this email. Updated information about GoMRI and funding can
be found on the GoMRI Web site: http://www.gulfresearchinitiative.org/
Fisheries Management Council Collaboration Presentation - Steve Bortone and Dave Reed
Steve Bortone gave a presentation on what the Council’s plans are moving forward in
developing Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) and how they are moving toward identifying
indicators to establish an EBM framework. His power point presentation is attached to this email.
GOMA Portal and State Data Collection Efforts - Seneca Holland
Seneca gave a presentation on the GOMAPortal. For more info visit:
http://gomaportal.org/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page
Discussion of Restoration Task Force Workplan – Alyssa Dausman presented on this.
 The Task force wants to coordinate with the structure of GOAM, going to the
PITS and pull individuals interested in participating in restoration projects.
 The Task force wants interaction with either state, federal, or tribal partners;
however a GOMA PIT representative will have the pull of getting
information/suggestions/support from the PIT.
 For more information please see the Task Force Web site:
http://www.restorethegulf.gov/
EPA GOMA RFP Update - Diane Altsman
Diane gave a quick update on the GOMA RFP and stated that 98 proposals were received
and that the review process was complete and EPA is now reviewing the QA/QC of scores each
proposal received. The announcement should be made in the next few weeks.
3
NOAA 2012 RFP ROP and Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning EIA Workplan
Integration - Laurie Rounds and Seneca Holland
 Laurie discussed the Regional Ocean Partnership Funding and the National Ocean
Policy planning tools with a focus on Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning.
 There is a need for Regional Planning bodies to focus on CMSP and the Regional
Ocean Partnership is an avenue to help fund the formation and work of these
bodies.
 Recap of the NOAA 2012 RFP with the two Focus Areas.
 Seneca has the comments from the last NOAA RFP that GOMA submitted under
and will provide them as an attachment to the meeting notes (attached to this
email).
 GOMA will submit the same Focus Area II proposal that addresses Coordination
 GOMA will submit on project for Focus Area I that looks to collect data that is
already available that could support CMSP and hold a series of workshops that
look for useful data and data gaps.
 Sharron Mesick, from NOAA NCDDC, commented on using national level
experts that have been involved with CMSP data and tools and pointed us to the
following Web site (http://cmsp.noaa.gov/) for more information and suggestions.
She also suggested that we pay close attention to the RFP and be specific to its
requests.
Update EIA Workplan
Individual Action Item teams broke into groups to update their action items.
4