A Watershed-to-Ocean Visualization and Community Conservation Action Initiative

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World citizens who live and work in the middle of a continent can feel connected to the ocean through their local watershed that flows to the ocean through a series of streams, rivers, and bays. We acknowledge that there is a growing opportunity to increase aquatic and ocean awareness and action through Internet-based applications made accessible through standard Web browsers. We would like to enable every community to participate in our process on behalf of their local watershed — if possible through the coordination activities of a local watershed council or waterkeeper alliance. We can help you participate by connecting your visual geospatial literacy needs to a customized interface, through our on-line interface, or by promoting your own specific Web address with the Watershed-to-Ocean Initiative tool suite available herein.

The Watersheds Project is currently pursuing the opportunity to fund work that will integrate watershed modeling services within the tools generated for watershed council and waterkeeper alliance use. Community management of model inputs and outputs through interactive visual tools allow a community to learn together about how their watershed behaves in natural cycles on behalf of providing ecological services to the community. Each layer, like those representative layers below, provide a component to a visual literacy associated with the watersheds in which they live, recreate, draw drinking water, or discharge used water.

Within these Web pages, we present a growing list of the data layers we are interested in obtaining, the visualization techniques and literacy motivation we plan on providing for a visible connection of one's watershed to the ocean, and the on-line workflow process we envision for connecting community organizers to continued learning and personal action opportunities in their own watershed.

Thanks to seed funding acquired in conjunction with The Ocean Project from the Bunting Family Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Save The Bay, Clean The Bay, and SoundCitizen, we have begun a new initiative to develop an interactive on-line watershed-to-ocean visualization and community conservation action prototype that will be made available to any interested individual or organization. Through this initial work, we expect to develop a process by which anyone can click on a virtual on-line globe to get directed to their ecological address, display the watersheds in their region, learn about their watershed's characteristics, and join local urgent or interesting conservation efforts with a personal tracking application to help them keep organized for conservation.