VAMLIS Mission The Virginia Association for Mapping and Land Information Systems is a professional association in Virginia designed to provide educational and networking opportunities for professionals who have an interest in the mapping sciences in Virginia.
As the ocean temperature rises following recent global warming trends, Atlantic cod populations have begun to disappear from their normal habitats on the east coast. This trend has been affecting aquatic life and in turn, access to the region’s fish resources. GIS analysis of this issue has enabled the creation of time sliders showing the change in temperature over time in relation to the change in cod distribution and the creation of habitat suitability indexes to show the sharp decline in suitable area for cod to spawn and live, since the onset of ocean and global warming trends. Marine biologists and fisheries managers shared their thoughts on which factors affect suitability for cod spawning including depth, substrate type, and temperature. These factors were used to create maps that show suitable areas for cod spawning from 1959 to the present, as well as predicting which areas will be suitable in the future until 2098. At present, the goal is to inform policy decisions about which areas must be protected to preserve what was once one of the region’s most abundant resources, cod. Over the past 2 years, Garrett Bellin, an undergraduate student at William & Mary, has performed GIS analysis to research and present cod disappearance at the National Science Foundation’s SCEMFIS conferences across the country using ArcGIS StoryMaps. GIS has proven to be an effective way to spread awareness about the disappearance of cod and ocean warming trends. In the past, fisheries experts used complicated and incomprehensible charts and diagrams to discuss this topic. Ocean warming and species/cod disappearance is an example of an issue where GIS visualizations have pushed government officials, fishing industry members, and scholars to rethink their misconceptions on the issue and understand the problem in a more digestible way.
