This week, Samoa will be localizing the Ocean Health Index (OHI) – a framework and tool for assessing the benefits people derive from the ocean – in partnership with Conservation International (CI), the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

Last week, Eva Schemmel, the lead of our Hawaiʻi Ocean Health Index (OHI) assessment, presented a sneak peek of the assessment’s results at the 7th International Conference on Environmental Future in Honolulu, HI. This conference sought to advance global and multi-disciplinary conversations around environmental futures, with a specific focus on humans and island environments.

A significant portion of my work on the Ocean Health Index (OHI) involves working with raster data, a specific type of spatial data where values are held in grid cells. The data I work with varies from high resolution, remotely sensed data on sea surface temperature to coarse, modeled data on global fish catch. When I was working on the global assessment, I dealt with raster data at a global scale.