Spatial Environmental Assessment Toolkit (SEAT) Plugin in QGIS

Introduction

The SEAT incorporates device specific parameters, site-specific hydrodynamic conditions, and local receptor information to assess the potential for environmental change within a system. Results from a successful SEAT application informs developers and regulators on the risk of environmental change associated with deploying a device or array in a site of interest. There are four modules available that assess different physical aspects of the impact of instruments on environmental conditions:
- Shear Stress Module: Analysis of spatial change in bed mobility
- Velocity Module: Analysis of spatial change in larval motility
- Acoustics Module: Analysis of acoustic propagation and thresholds
- Power Module: Analysis of power generated by WEC/CEC array
For this tutorial we will be using the Shear Stress Module on a coastal region of interest in Canada. This region is the Cow Bay/Eastern Passage area, south of Dartmouth.

ROI in Orange

Download and Install Plugin

To download and install the SEAT plugin for QGIS, follow the instructions on the page linked below.

https://sandialabs.github.io/seat-qgis-plugin/installation.html

Download Datasets

a) Bathymetry

Download CHS bathymetric grid for ou study area (east coast of Canada). Download as GeoTIFF.

Visit site: https://data.chs-shc.ca/dashboard/map

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Select Bathymetric region, for this tutorial the Eastern Passage coast south of Dartmouth.

Select region

Choose GeoTIFF

Click Next to Download