World Seagrass Conference 2022 and the 14th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (WSC2022 & ISBW14) was held in Annapolis, MD, USA on 7-12 August 2022, and Dr. Genki TERAUCHI, senior researcher of NOWPAP CEARAC, joined the conference to introduce Seagrass Mapper which was originally developed by CEARAC in the 2020-2021 biennium to map the distribution of eelgrasses in the NOWPAP region.
WSC and ISBW are biennial conferences organized by the world Seagrass Association. The events held in Annapolis was originally planned in 2020; however, because of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, they were postponed to 2022. Also, the meetings allowed a hybrid participation: in-person in general and virtual if necessary.
ISBW14 covered a range of topics from biological aspects of seagrass and its surrounding environment to monitoring mapping efforts. Dr. TERAUCHI virtually organized a workshop to introduced Seagrass Mapper, a Google Earth Engine based web tool for mapping seagrass on 12 August, with Mr. Xuan Truong Trinh of University of Tokyo who participated on site. There are 65 people participated in the workshop and learned how to prepare training data based on field-based information and the procedure of analyzing satellite images for seagrass mapping.
For more information, please visit NOWPAP Remote Sensing Training Program website at https://nowpap-remote-sensing-training.org/npwd/ and WSC2022 & ISBW14 website: https://isbw14.org/.
Participants of the Seagrass Workshop and Mr. Xuan Truong Trinh at the center holding
his laptop showing Dr. Terauchi attending online from Japan
