Management of Natural Resources Information for the Virgin Islands National Park and Biosphere Reserve

Island Resources Foundation; Potter, Bruce; Green, Kenneth; Goodwin, Melvin

This study provides an overview of how natural resource/environmental information is generated, filed, exchanged and utilized by those institutions and researchers linked to the Virgin Islands Biosphere Reserve (VIBR) through the Virgin Islands Resource Management Cooperative (VIRMC). This includes information generated by the Virgin Islands National Park, agencies of the Virgin Islands Government, the University of the Virgin Islands, and occasionally by visiting researchers. Providers and users of natural resources information were surveyed to determine high priority needs for management of future information dissemination activities. Scientists and managers expressed a need for improved access to information and identified a number of issues which impede the use of information, especially for land and coastal use management purposes, under current circumstances. Key constraints to effective development and use of the VIBR resource management database include problems with both the format and storage of detailed Qata from analytical and synoptic studies and from ongoing, longer term environmental monitoring activities. Too often, since researchers, as data generators, are widely dispersed among various institutions, primary source data are lost or are available in such diverse formats that they cannot be easily used by other analysts or researchers. In addition, there is no single archival source of historical information or reports on conditions in the VIBR. Use of the data and information gathered from the VIBR for on-going decisionmaking is limited in part by the failure to identify or analyze such information with specific sites within the Reserve. Based on these findings, the study concludes the VIBR should: establish a standard geographic reference system to be applied to all information gathered from the Biosphere Reserve; require all source data from monitoring or research to be recorded in a common database format; establish a long-term program leading to the implementation of a GIS for the Reserve; and support the establishment of a semi-autonomous Clearinghouse to collect and disseminate natural resource data and information pertinent to research and management of the Biosphere Reserve. Detailed recommendations are presented to carry out these suggestions.