New products of the Blue Land project: GisPORT application and Web-GIS platform for biodiversity conservation
Local Government of municipality Ulcinj, their residents and fishermen will be able to jointly contribute to the protection of biodiversity and the sustainable use of marine and coastal resources through the GisPort mobile application and the WebGis platform.
These are two very important products of the Blue Land project, funded under the IPA Interreg cross-border cooperation program of three countries, Italy, Albania and Montenegro, for the period 2014-2020.
The manager of the project from the Institute of Maritime Biology of the University of Montenegro, Ana Pešić, PhD says that Web-GIS platform and GisPORT applications are free, so they can be downloaded from the website of BLUE LAND project (https://blueland.italy-albania-montenegro.eu/outputs).
“GisPORT is a smartphone application, developed in English and in three local languages, with goal to inform public, local citizens and tourists about main characteristics of three BLUE LAND areas. With GisPORT application approach “citizen science” is supported and developed through which citizens, students and local communities are engaged in monitoring activities and obtaining of data. This stimulates the feeling of ownership over the BLUE LAND area and increases awareness of the importance and preservation of local biodiversity and environmental issues, such as pollution, the emergence of new species, etc.", explains Pešić.
The transnational Web-GIS platform brings together all existing and data collected through this project, for BLUE LAND areas of all three countries for both land and sea, for physical, ecological characteristics, administrative boundaries, georeferenced phenomena of target species, ecosystem maps and ecosystems service, as well as certain socio-economic data.
“The platform is publicly available and free of charge, is easy to use and will be distributed to all relevant institutions and stakeholders in Montenegro. The data available on the Web-GIS platform can be used for many purposes, for scientific research, for future area management, spatial planning, for the promotion of BLUE LAND models, for raising public awareness, etc.", adds Pešić.
The BLUE LAND project is currently in the final phase of implementation. The overall goal of the project is to define, develop and implement a common management model and tools aimed at protecting biodiversity and sustainable use of marine and coastal resources through joint management activities. It is planned to apply the so-called "Bottom-up" approach which implies the realization of the project through the active involvement of the local self-government of the municipality of Ulcinj, the population and local fishermen and all other stakeholders.
In Montenegro, the Bojana estuary, the Velika plaža area as a significant ecosystem under the great influence of anthropogenic activities, which is a significant tourist place, where there is a large construction, a significant volume of fishing activities, and additional reason is the existence of kalimer networks, which have recently received the status of a protected cultural property.