GIS and Conservation Priorities

The following is a list of actions and needs which a broad consortium of conservation groups have listed as being of the highest priority. With each action is listed the sorts of GIS capabilities which will be essential in resolving the problem (a glossary of these functions is provided at the end). Most of these examples are taken from existing programs applying GIS methods to environmental problems, many of which are listed in the ECP members list.

1. Major effort required to document the world's biodiversity: a. document species, basic inventory GIS coupled with remote sensing data allows a crude classification and a rapid overall view of a large area. This view can then be used to focus field efforts into those areas most threatened. Remote sensing image classification is itself verified this way, but these same "ground-truth" methods can apply to complex analyses and classifications as well, such as predicting wildlife species occurrence on the basis of vegetation, slope, elevation, topography, season, land use, history, land management, and proximity to settlement and roads. All of these factors can be variously combined as measures of "habitat," defining the environment as it affects a particular species, including human effects. Such analyses can be used to prepare putative species lists for little-known areas to help guide field efforts or to help sound the alarm if endangered species might be likely to occur in a little-known area threatened with destruction. b. basic maps of flora and fauna Used simply as a map management tool, GIS can help to organize a large collection of spatially-referenced paper data by tying index maps into traditional bibliographic databases. As the next step, tabular data on each species characteristics, requirements and status can be collected into a database and linked with the GIS to digitized maps. The relational power of the GIS allows data to be specifically maintained about each species at each site, such as its population status and protection status at that site, in addition to separate tables giving the overall global characteristics of a species such as biomass, life history, etc. Once these links are made, it is then possible to conduct queries and prepare maps from questions like "map all fall- breeding mammalian species of large biomass and declining population status in less-protected areas and then overlay with average autumnal rainfall and agricultural activity" c. practical field taxonomic aids d. rapid inventory methods GIS can combine physical data such as soils, rainfall and elevation or use remote sensing data to plot out draft habitat maps which can be field-edited and verified more rapidly than a ground mapping program starting from scratch. As mentioned before, GIS can make crude predictions on the basis of habitat of which species might be present, a technique which has already proven useful in some tabular conservation databases.

1. Ecological fieldwork to study how all the pieces fit together using Integrated Interdisciplinary approaches a. effects of habitat loss and population fragmentation b. population dynamics c. habitat dependencies: Which physical and cultural factors are most correlated to observed species occurrence? Of course, such GIS research must be based on thorough knowledge of the species life history and natural history if it is to have any meaning. d. explore interactions between species, habitats and human activity. e. explore why a species is where it is: Maps of actual species occurrence overlaid with present and former extent of suitable habitat form the basis of such analyses. Maps of human history, human activity, agriculture, other species and physical environmental factors are all useful. f. explore patterns of species reproductive success All of these efforts will rely extensively upon the integrative and modelling abilities of a GIS. The success of these efforts will depend mostly on the quality of the data obtained and the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the database design.

1. Define the relative environmental sensitivity of areas: Buffering and overlays would be used to combine various measures of rarity, threat and proximity in order to produce maps of environmental sensitivity.

2. Determine which species and habitats are protected: Once species and habitat maps are combined with protected areas and human pressure maps, selection operations within the linked databases will reveal the percentage of range under threat for each species.

3. Identify sites for protection: Modelling would be used as in the above examples to flexibly reflect the criteria for site protection.

4. Manage these sites. A GIS used to manage baseline data can also model different management scenarios and help guide the search for ideal management options

5. Explore alternative conservations strategies 6. Compare undisturbed and disturbed habitats as groundwork for restoration 7. Explore how locals use the resources. The ability of a GIS to combine data from such disparate sources as vegetation community mapping and demographic maps allows analysis of local economies in ecological or bioregional terms. Patterns of local livelihood and their impacts on local environment can be discerned and used as a guide in management plans.

1. Monitor changes in diversity, deforestation climate change, pollution over large areas and collate information on current status and trends in resources to support changes in policies Large spatial databases of the complexity needed to monitor environmental change would simply be impossible without the database management tools provided by a GIS. Most important among these is tiling, the ability to break large databases up into smaller manageable pieces linked together in a common spatial structure and a common database definition.

Recent studies on the use and effectiveness of environmental information among government decision- makers reveals that their most common unmet desire is to obtain information in a form that is useful to them, so that they can integrate it with the rest of their activities. The dual ability of a GIS to produce information in map form or linked tabular form gives it extraordinary flexibility. Maps are among the most useful formats for information since they represent spatial patterns directly and unambiguously compared to tables or tabular databases. 1. Establish local, sectorial and national information management systems to ensure the USE of information. 2. Make information available to planners and decision makers in useful forms such as environmental status reports. 3. Establish tropical research centers 4. Establish local action plans and local action centers. 5. Establish National Conservation Strategies to define the basic agreed-upon problems and lay out the agreed-upon objectives via action plans, whose progress is monitored. 6. Establish global strategies to set the framework for local and national efforts and set international priorities. "GIS has greatly simplified the preparation of integrated biodiversity conservation strategies" 7. Demonstrate how various management or development options will impact environmentally sensitive areas. 8. Prepare evidence for hearings, enforcement 9. Study local resource use, how harvested, awareness of limiting conditions, possible alternate sources of income, ethnic diversity. What incentives are needed to change behavior that negatively affects the environment?

Buffer: A Buffer is a type of proximity analysis where zones of a given distance are generated around spatial features. The distances may be arbitrary or they may depend upon other attributes of the spatial feature such as sensitivity. Buffers are commonly used to establish minimum protective distances around environmentally sensitive features, or to establish zones of influence around environmentally disruptive phenomena.

Overlay: An Overlay is the process of combining two or more spatial databases (map layers) to produce a new third database, which contains the relationships defined by the overlapping intersection or combined union of the input databases. Overlay is the basic method for combining data on a spatial basis.

Adjacency: Adjacency is the process of studying how spatial features interact with their neighbors. Habitat quality of individual sites is largely determined by the nature of surrounding areas, wether urban, agricultural or wild.

Dissolve: This is the process of joining adjacent features that share a common characteristic, allowing a larger generalized view of a pattern.

Select: Spatial features can be selected and analyzed separately using spatial methods such as all features within some arbitrary polygon or with some arbitrary distance of a point or line (buffer). The tabular data associated with this selection can be analyzed in parallel with standard statistical methods. Conversely, tabular selection processes can be applied to these tables such as all features with value x, and the linkage between this table and the spatial data allows an immediate map to be created of the selected records.

Topographic Surface: The GIS can automatically calculate point and line elevation data into contour maps, slope, aspect, watershed and related analytical interpretations of terrain, for 3-D display on terminals or other devices. Elevation, slope and aspect are critical factors in the growth and success of many species and habitats. The ability to present any data set as 3-D patterns combined with geography is an important analytical and visualization tool.

Network: Network refers to how linear features are connected together, like roads or streams. Network software tools allow paths to be followed through such networks according to any attribute such as blockage, flow rate, toxicity, etc. These tools are important in modelling migration routes and stream flows.

Relation: Relation refers to the unlimited possibilities for associating tabular data with spatial features. Complex many-to-many relationships such as are found between species and sites (a species occurs on many sites and a site supports many species) can be represented and analyzed for spatial patterns.

Model: a set of rules and procedures for conducting spatial analysis drawing from all of the techniques listed above.