Stay up to date on news and features about aquatic habitat mapping with BioBase
What kind of sonar hardware should I buy for BioBase Mapping is the most common question we are asked. Admittedly, continual change in technology, products, and features can be intimidating and sometimes confusing. With this blog, we focus on what you need to know to get started with BioBase. We start with the Portable BioBase Kit – an off-the-shelf portable solution that has everything you need
Continue reading “What Sonar Do I Need for BioBase Mapping? – Updated”
Guest Blog by Robert M. Baker, CPG, PG (a) and Penelope R. Baker (b)
(a) Professional geologist at RMBAKER LLC and Navico BioBase Ambassador
(b) Stanford University student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Wildlife Photographer
BioBase is a cloud software that directly supports the preservation of our aquatic environments. Words like preservation and conservation directly imply things like careful planning, measuring and monitoring, treatment and rehabilitation – actionable strategies for the good of animals, plants and natural resources where BioBase can play an important role. BioBase offers an opportunity to observe natural systems, like seagrasses, not easily seen otherwise and does so effortlessly and affordably.
Continue reading “Mapping seagrass with BioBase and saving Florida Manatees”
Guest Blog By Dr. Adrian Flynn(a) and Dr. Travis Dutka(b)
(a) Marine Ecologist and Director at Fathom Pacific
(b) Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University Department of Ecology, Environment, and Evolution.
The waters of Western Port in southeastern Australia are a recreational fishing haven and hidden beneath its turbid waters, a unique fragile seafloor community has been newly described. Here, bryozoans, skeleton-forming filter-feeding organisms also known as ‘lace corals’, form expansive areas of reef that support a high diversity and abundance of macroinvertebrates important to snapper and other prized recreational fish species.
Continue reading “Social mapping of Australian bays and conservation of Fish Aggregating Bryozoans”
Sonar technology continues to improve bringing anglers and aquatic managers better, more clear pictures of the underwater environment on which they are so intently focused. Launched in 2011, BioBase’s EcoSound technology was the first cloud aquatic mapping system designed to process sonar logs from off-the-shelf Lowrance® sonar and create maps of bathymetry, aquatic vegetation biovolume, and bottom hardness for aquatic resource professionals. Today, BioBase is the leading cloud software solution for automated lake and coastal seagrass mapping.
Between 2011 and 2014, the algorithm underwent five major revisions. The bottom hardness algorithm has undergone two major revisions, with the last one in 2014. Thus, our code base was due for an overhaul in order to maintain performance and compatibility with newer generation Lowrance and Simrad sonar. This refactoring effort was also an opportunity for us to improve the vegetation and bottom hardness algorithms. Many of these improvements also carry over sister consumer technology C-MAP Genesis, which uses many of the same algorithms and backend processing architecture
Continue reading “BioBase EcoSound Vegetation and Bottom Hardness Algorithms Improved”
New EcoSound Subscription Models Launched
At BioBase, we are delighted to announce a new subscription model for EcoSound, created to ensure all customers can make the most out of the mapping platform.
Aligned with parent company Navico’s Environmental Sustainability Mission, and to support the widespread adoption of our technology to further the goals of aquatic conservation, BioBase will be providing free subscriptions (with up to 20 GB of storage) to Environmental Agencies, Non-Profits, and Universities engaged in aquatic resource management and research.
In order to make this a smooth transition for our current subscribers, we will move anyone with an unlimited Single-User or Single-Waterbody subscription into the appropriate full-featured Habitat+ subscription with sufficient storage until their subscription is due to expire in 2021.
FREE Subscriptions for Government, Universities and Environment Agencies
Current subscribers eligible for a free subscription should notice little change outside of being eligible for additional “freemium” subscriptions for their institution
Further, Navico will also be offering discounts of up to 25% on Lowrance hardware for US-Based agencies and universities.
Please visit our plans page https://www.biobasemaps.com/Plans to see the full list of plans, pricing, and features and download a brochure.
EcoSat is a first of its kind semi-automated satellite imagery processing tool that’s part of the BioBase cloud mapping platform (Figures 1 and 2). EcoSat is helping several US states and countries map and monitor the status of shallow growing aquatic vegetation and benthic habitats. In this blog, we discuss several tips and tricks about how practitioners can maximize the accuracy and precision of their EcoSat vegetation maps.
Continue reading “New EcoSat Feature: Reclassify individual vegetation polygons”
