Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Graves, Allison

A GIS presence was established through two grants. In 1998, the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) provided a grant to NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary program. A PC based (Micron) GIS workstation and software (ArcView 3x) were provided. In the Spring of 2001, Professor Dawn Wright PhD of Oregon State University obtained a grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase a Silicon Graphics workstation and ArcGIS8.1 for the Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This is currently utilized to house detailed GIS data and imagery for FBNMS. Additional data sets for the seven islands of American Samoa are also stored on this server. In 2002, a number of issues regarding map projections and datums were resolved allowing GIS users to process information to the federal standard. FBNMS contracted Allison Graves to acquire framework GIS layers and other information for American Samoa, to organize this information and provide updates to Oregon State University. The result of this effort is the standardized directory structure and naming conventions that have been adopted for use in the American Samoa Spatial Data Infrastructure. A copy of the updated data stored on the local server in the Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary office has been provided to Dawn Wright. Several graduate students at OSU have funded research projects in American Samoa and it has been recommended that the ASGIS standards be incorporated into their work.