Seascapes Viewer

Seascapes are dynamic classes of water masses defined by surface properties obtained via satellite — sea surface temperature, salinity, chlorophyll-a, colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), and others — combined with an ordination statistical process (Kavanaugh et al. 2016). Each class represents a distinct ocean habitat type that shifts in space and time as water masses move, making Seascapes a powerful proxy predictor for species distributions.

The Seascapes Viewer synchronizes an interactive map with a summarized time series for each National Marine Sanctuary. You can:

• Zoom in and out across space and time
• Click the play button to animate the full record
• Click any time point to update the map to that snapshot
• Select any U.S. National Marine Sanctuary from the left panel

The underlying data are served via ERDDAP and processed by the seascapeR R package, which provides functions for fetching, analyzing, and visualizing Seascapes data across NOAA Sanctuaries and other MBON regions.

References

Kavanaugh, M.T., Oliver, M.J., Chavez, F.P., Letelier, R.M., Muller-Karger, F.E., and Doney, S.C. (2016). Seascapes as a new vernacular for pelagic ocean monitoring, management and conservation. ICES Journal of Marine Science 73(7): 1839–1850. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsw086