An innovative ocean planning tool for the Atlantic outer continental shelf: The EcoSpatial Information Database

Robust scientific information is essential to proper leasing decisions in offshore waters of the United States. This information develops the necessary understanding of the environment required to protect ecosystems during sustainable energy development offshore. Collection of existing scientific information can be a laborious and time-consuming process. In an effort to collate and evaluate scientific information in a more effective and timely manner, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) created a system that would improve the speed with which environmental research is performed while maintaining scientific defensibility of the resulting decisions. The EcoSpatial Information Database (ESID, pronounced “ee-sid”), available at http://esid.boem.gov, makes relevant scientific literature and ecological data for the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the U.S. Atlantic Coast readily accessible via advanced location and content data searches. A unique search protocol was developed to identify and scientifically screen thousands of scientific articles and environmental reports to identify scientific datasets in the disciplines of marine geology, water quality, pelagic ecology, and benthic ecology. A prioritization process culled the results to a total of 3108 resources spanning the years of 1884 to 2010. These resources were then geospatially referenced and incorporated into the ESID. A web-based Geographic Information System (GIS), hosted in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), was developed to provide broad access to the data and supporting documents. The cloud-based ESID Web Application allows users to search by content and location, view citations and abstracts, export bibliographic entries and view and download documents. The system is designed to support virtually unlimited geographic and subject matter expansion and will streamline BOEM's efforts to produce the required National Environmental Policy Act documents in a more efficient manner.