Today, besides than carrying out new researches, it is pivotal for science to make data and results directly accessible to the public and, in particular, to decision-makers for conservation purposes. In this light, statistical methods, data visualization, and data sharing tools make it easy to visualize and share raw data (databases) as well as data elaborations.
Cetaceans are strictly protected in many sectors of the Mediterranean Sea, though our understanding of species spatial distributions and habitat use is still deficient. These represent basic information to better understand cetaceans' ecology and identify zones overlapping with human activities. However, these mammals are elusive and highly mobile, able to migrate for thousands of kilometers. Hence, targeted surveys are expensive and occurrence data are sparse in space and time. We aim at building the most comprehensive database of cetaceans' occurrences in the Italian waters to estimate the abundance and distribution patterns of single species and entire taxa. The database will archive records provided by different sources (social media and scientific surveys). The database has to be nestled in a standardized framework controlling for heterogeneous observation efforts yielded by data sources. The statistical methodology must take into account these sources of variability and also the specific features of presence-only data. Elaborations will be presented in a web app in the form of interactive descriptive maps. Users could navigate through the map and simulate different predictive scenarios of occurrence probability based on environmental predictors. These maps could directly represent an easily readable tool for managers and decision-makers to plan conservation actions; data will be available to the scientific community for further investigations through direct downloads from the app. The latter will be regulated according to different access levels defined according to legal regulation on data ownership.
Currently, Italian cetacean data are dispersed and not easily accessible by researchers, decision-makers, and citizens. This work has the intent to increase awareness and perception of target species conditions, improving the intensity and orientation of public involvement in conservation initiatives
Our tool will create a repository that can potentially collect all existing Italian data. The user interface we are going to build will allow the simple elaboration of presence-only data, visualization of maps describing the temporal and spatial distribution of species, a better assessment of conservation status and evolution of the available species. We believe that our tool may convince reluctant groups to share their data once we guarantee limited access, proper agreements and we show the potential of the tool.
There are several areas in Italian Mediterranean where data coverage is limited, and it could be improved with the help of citizen science. In our application, we would like to dedicate a specific area for the upload of georeferenced photographic data. Building on the experience with the sharkPulse web site, we plan to increase and simplify citizen provided sightings of relevant species. Following what is implemented in the sharkPulse monitor (http://baseline3.stanford.edu/SharkPulse/pulse-monitor-2/), we want to allow authorized users to visualize all sightings records both globally and for single species. Records can be aggregated in regional clusters or disaggregated to focus on a single species punctual distribution. Furthermore, from citizen provided records, each record on the map is represented by a pop-up displaying the photographic record, the date, the common and scientific name, and the record source.
Existing data-repository, such as https://cetsound.noaa.gov/cda-index, provide maps at a spatial resolution of 10km2 and 25km2, we can provide tools to obtain valid maps at a finer resolution (1km2). We plan to add results from several case studies that are currently under development as immediately available maps and scripts and programs to obtain similar type of maps by the users in areas not included in the case studies.
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