MEMP funds environment monitoring trip in the North Region

MEMP (Maldives Environmental Management Project) has funded an environmental monitoring trip to the North Region from the 10th to the 28th of April 2012. The trip was carried out jointly by two of the stakeholder agencies associated with the project, namely the Marine Research Centre (MRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The purpose of the trip was to carry out ongoing monitoring of several sites in the North Region (Noonu, Raa, Baa and Lhaviyani atolls) which have been surveyed previously, in order to record the status and changes occurring in the selected sites. The data from this and other monitoring trips will eventually be fed into the National Geographic Information System that has been established under the MEMP project, and which now contains a database that will gather comprehensive data on the environment of the Maldives.

The initial surveys were started in 2009, although formal surveys were begun in 2011. MRC surveyed the coral reefs at 12 sites in these atolls, whereas the EPA conducted terrestrial monitoring at 14 sites, and coastal monitoring at 6 sites. Eight participants from EPA and 4 staff from MRC carried out the observations on this trip. There will be another trip in this series towards the end of the year.