A significant challenge faced by climate scientists and land managers in the public and private sectors is the need for reliable and complete information about the status of ecosystem components (e.g. air, land, water, plants, animals) that may be influenced by climate change. While many organizations monitor one or more aspect of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, these monitoring programs are seldom coordinated and the associated data are not readily discoverable. The Global Change Monitoring Portal (GCMP) is a recently released tool of the DOI Southeast Climate Science Center designed to support the efforts of multiple federal, state, and other organizations by connecting them to these data resources. The GCMP will provide a centralized, comprehensive catalog of information about monitoring networks associated with aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems that can be used to assess the potential effects of climate change in the southeastern United States. Monitoring programs are classified according to the types of observations made, such as media and parameter category, and monitoring sites are mapped into geographic categories such as Ecoregion and Landscape Conservation Cooperative, so that the database can be searched and displayed by measurement and/or geographic criteria. This webinar introduces some of the features of the Global Change Monitoring Portal, currently in the first phase of development.
