Marine and Coastal Monitoring

Promoting the monitoring of marine protected areas and natural resources in Mexican seas

The Project

The project's objective is to promote monitoring of marine protected areas (MPAs) and the natural resources of Mexican seas, to understand the state of marine and coastal resources, and to encourage synergies that avoid duplication of efforts, facilitating decision-making.

Context

In 2014, FMCN developed, with resources from The Walton Family Foundation and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Monitoreo Noroeste platform, a public portal containing metadata from monitoring databases in the Gulf of California and the North Pacific. In 2020, again, with the support of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and its own resources, the expansion of the platform formerly known as Monitoreo Noroeste to the Yucatan Peninsula began within the Infocéanos project. The metadata from the marine-coastal monitoring and research databases will be integrated into the Marine-Coastal Information and Analysis System (SIMAR), developed by the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO, acronym in Spanish).

In parallel, FMCN collaborates with CONABIO in monitoring the red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle). Between 2016 and 2017, the distribution and growth rates of red mangrove in five sites in northwestern Mexico were delineated using remote sensing techniques with support from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

As of 2020, FMCN and CONABIO are working to extrapolate the remote sensing methodology for R. mangle in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The lines of work that guide the actions of the Marine-Coastal Monitoring project are:

Development of a marine and coastal monitoring platform.
Generation of information on the coverage and distribution of red mangrove in northwestern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula.
Diagnosis of aquaculture in Mexico for the identification of lines of action towards sustainability.

FMCN collaborates with CONABIO to monitor the distribution and growth rates of red mangrove in northwestern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula.

Achievements

The project has achieved a multi-year collaboration with CONABIO to validate the remote sensing methodology with Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 satellites to differentiate the red mangrove and identify its coverage and distribution in the Gulf of California.

In collaboration with CONABIO, two marine monitoring subprojects were initiated during the first half of 2022, whose main objectives are identifying red mangrove communities in northwestern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula and consolidating INFOCÉANOS, a marine and coastal monitoring and research metadata platform.

In addition, the digital launch of the document "Diagnosis of aquaculture in Mexico" was carried out, which includes lines of action to guide this practice towards sustainability.