EarthSoft renews support for Pollution Tracker database

August 2024  ̶  Ocean Wise has renewed the software maintenance agreement for its Pollution Tracker program with EarthSoft.

EQuIS™ Online, EarthSoft’s software-as-a-service product on the Microsoft Azure cloud, provides Ocean Wise the power to collaborate with coastal partners to monitor marine pollution in British Columbia, Canada.

Phase 2 of Pollution Tracker’s work, conducted between 2018 and 2020, is now available, adding valuable updates to the previous Phase 1 (2015 – 2017) dataset. The contaminants detected in both Phase 1 and 2 samples reflect a variety of sources, including local urban and industrial inputs to the marine environment (e.g., wastewater and effluent discharges, road run-off, storm-water inputs, shipping activities, pesticide use), external inputs (e.g., contaminants carried from other places via oceanic and atmospheric transport), and oceanographic factors (e.g., currents, water depth, bottom substrate). Phase 3 of Pollution Tracker launched in 2021, and analysis of results is still underway. Phase 4 sampling will commence in 2024. These phases will build on Phase 1 and Phase 2 results at dedicated Pollution Tracker sites, expanding the project’s spatial coverage and continue to lay the foundation for coast wide temporal and spatial trend analyses.

With a quickly expanding dataset and sights set on expansion to other coastlines, Ocean Wise needed a solution for data storage and easy data retrieval. Ocean Wise adopted EQuIS as their solution to manage the Pollution Tracker dataset because of EQuIS’ widespread use and dependable reputation, and due to EarthSoft’s support of non-profit environmental research and conservation work. Ocean Wise aims to use the Pollution Tracker data to inform various contaminant-related marine research projects, from investigating the effects of contaminants on the health of marine mammals to looking at the safety of traditional seafoods for human consumers in coastal communities.

A case study of Ocean Wise’s work with EQuIS is available here.