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General Conservation Page 13
(ECP and CTSP grantees, reports, and other sites of interest for conservation
geography, mapping and GIS. Grantees are coded by program and year of
grant at the end of their name/state, i.e. e91 means ECP grant in 1991.
c=cstp, cm=ctsp-mac, cs=ctsp-software)
Sitka Conservation Society, Sitka AK c95 c97.
(P.O. Box 316 Sitka, Alaska 99835 phone: (907)747-7509 fax: (907)747-6105
email: sitconsv@ptialaska.net.) We believe that our economic future depends
on a healthy environment and a sustainable lifestyle. Those who care for this
area must work together to protect its rich diversity and incomparable beauty.
We use geographic information systems (GIS) to aid in understanding and analysis
of natural resources and to share knowledge with others interested in issues affecting
the coastal temperate rainforests of Southeast Alaska. Currently, our
most critical issue is the revision to the
Tongass Land Management Plan. The Planning Team is analyizing public comments
on the draft now. We felt that protection for fisheries and wildlife habitat
was far less than recommended by scientists. GIS STATUS:
"One of the major goals that SCS had developed
in 1997 was to produce an atlas of the local use area which focused on
the distribution of natural resources and the economic importance of not
harvesting timber...The goal was to provide a model of community-based
planning for the US Forest Service and other communities in Southeast
Alaska. The project responds to a need for a more balanced approach to
land designations at the local as well as the regional scale. For our
analysis, six resource sectors were to be examined: sustainable timber,
non-timber forest products, subsistence food sources and wildlife habitat,
commercial fisheries, tourism and recreation. The analysis would build
on USFS data and siting criteria, then include information from other
organizations and local knowledge to refine siting criteria and allocate
resources in a more holistic manner. David and I spent a great deal of
time wrestling with analysis and design decisions. We realized as we struggled
with these issues that we had a lot of questions about the data and its
suitability for the type of finer-scale analyses we hoped to accomplish.
Because this project was so complex, planning discussions became a big
time sink without much visible result. This was hard for the SCS board
to understand, and led them to question what their GIS program was accomplishing...
The concern about data understanding led me to work with the Sitka Ranger
District to develop a collaborative proposal to document data....Goals
of the project were to develop better data and user documentation on US.
Forest Service (FS) data sets, and to develop a predictive model on the
biomass of certain under-story resources of the Sitka area. Part of the
project funding came from the collaborative stewardship project money
of the FS. This funding was highly significant for several reasons: 1)
Data barriers will be reduced, making the work of our facility much more
efficient and assisting other groups in using this data. 2) Development
of the models benefits management of existing resource uses and study
of potential for new businesses. 3) It assists with the current shift
in focus we are hoping the FS will make from primarily timber resource
management towards more integrated multiple resource management. 4) The
project was rather unique as a cooperative effort between a conservation
group and the FS and will improve our ability to effect change. It is
one of the first tangible projects of the collaborative stewardship initiative
of the FS.I entered into this project with high hopes that, through collaborative
analyses with USFS staff, I would be able to gain much greater understanding
of landscape ecology, GIS skills, and improved ability to apply the data.
I also had a goal that was somewhat adversarial in nature; in that I hoped
the project would formally document limitations and inappropriate uses
of the data. The vegetative cover layer used by the FS in habitat capability
modeling was developed with a primary goal of estimating timber volume
rather than forest structure. It is not capable of discriminating differences
in habitat quality. Timber harvest alternatives are presented in terms
of productive acres of old growth that will remain after harvest, but
there has been little acknowledgement of the wide range of habitats found
within that grouping, and the impact of timber harvest on high quality
habitat. Thus, I hoped to document the limitations of this data set for
habitat modeling. As we wrestled with the best way to document
these datasets, and make them more accessible to the public, we came to
the conclusion that formal FGDC-compliant metadata was not helpful. We
thought more in terms of developing user introductions to the datasets.
It seemed helpful to provide background information on management issues,
because you cant understand a dataset without understanding the analysis
goals for which the data were developed. I came to the conclusion that
this information could best be presented in hypertext markup language
(html). This enables the reader to have the option of accessing background
information as needed. Throughout the project, I published the information
in draft form on our webpage. I decided that tutorials on using the data
were one of the best ways to help people understand the datasets. I began
to form a goal of developing our website as a teaching medium focusing
on local GIS datasets, how they are used in resource management, and background
information on conservation biology and landscape ecology. Communication
with the public, especially in the political advocacy arena, often requires
short and simple messages. GIS has strength in making complexity more
comprehensible. Yet to truly understand ecosystems one must understand
complexity. I see a tendency in the people requesting maps from me to
ask for simplicity. I worry that this minimizes the capacity of our GIS
system. If GIS is only used for graphic persuasion, other less
costly programs could be used. In order to ask for my boards support in
performing complex analyses, which take much longer to produce visible
products, I must be clear on how those analyses will serve our goals,
how long they will take, or why it is worthwhile for me to be trained
in these analytical techniques."
1997: We Received a grant for cooperative data sharing and resource analysis
with the Sitka Ranger District, U.S.F.S. The Tongass Land Management Plan
(TLMP), clean up of the Sitka Pulp mill, and an economic and resource
analysis of the Sitka area were also important focuses of the GIS work.
Threatened Places maps were prepared, showing the areas allocated to timber
harvest around communities under the new TLMP. The maps were disseminated
by publishing them on our Internet site, by distribution to local groups,
and published in a regional conservation newsletter, which goes to over
2000 members. The maps were kept deliberately simple, and without color
to make them easily reproducible.... 1998: The major focus of the year
was the data-sharing grant with the USFS. The material was published on
CD-ROM with local use area data sets, maps, and teaching documents. The
SCS website was developed as a teaching facility using the data sharing
work. Work was begun preparing maps and analyses for goshawk litigation.
An educational outreach program was developed, offering independent study
classes to two students from local educational institutions."
Skagit Conservation Database Consortium, Wa c99. (c/o
Skagit Land Trust 520 S. First St., Mount Vernon, WA. 98273. GIS Contact:
Martha Bray tel:360-428-7878 fax:360-428-7878 email:marthab@fidalgo.net.)
"The Skagit Land Trust was organized in March 1992 with 31 Charter
Members, as a way to help conserve a balance of natural resources in Skagit
County for future generations. As of December 31, 1998, the Trust held
18 conservation easements protecting 560 acres of land, and owned, in
fee, 11 important parcels totaling 190 acres, for a total of 750 acres
of protected and/or owned land in Skagit County....The 8 million square
kilometer Skagit river watershed is located equidistant between Seattle
and Vancouver B.C. metropolitan regions, and there is increasing pressures
on the natural resources found in the valley...In order to create a unified
database and provide conservation organizations access to a Geographic
Information System the Skagit Conservation Database Consortium (SCDC)
was started in January of 1998. The SCDC collects and analyzes environmental
data for the conservation of natural resources within the Skagit river
watershed. This data comes from the conservation and natural resource
management organizations in the area, and assembled together facilitates
the organizations in their conservation activities. Any organization involved
in conservation activities in the Skagit valley is able to be a part of
the consortium by signing the memorandum of understanding."
Skagit Watershed Council Wa
e98. (SWC) (407 Main Street, Suite 205, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 tel:360-419-9326
email: skagitws@sos.net GIS Contact: Ben Perkowski, Technical Coordinator)
"comprises 33 member organizations, including tribes and other governmental
entities, conservation organizations, business and industry groups."
GIS Program: Maps and Data Site:
"We believe ArcView and Spatial Analyst will be critical in supporting our
screening of potential habitat enhancement projects in the Basin consistent with
our scientifically-based restoration and protection strategy, which has been developed
over the past two years. We plan to use available GIS coverages from organizations
such as the Skagit System Cooperative, Skagit County, the state Department
of Natural Resources, the US Forest Service, USGS, the University of Washington,
etc. to develop ArcView projects to help determine potential restoration
areas and areas that are high priority for protection. Through our Restoration
Strategy, we have already identified methods to screen potential projects
through the Habitat Protection and Restoration Strategy that will require
the capabilities of ArcView and Spatial Analyst to manipulate and map large
spatial data layers such as land use, vegetation, elevation, habitat types,
parcel ownership, etc. We hope and plan to use these ESRI products to
produce maps that can be used at public meetings and workshops to help
the community understand and participate in the prioritization and implementation
of restoration and protection activities in the Basin. Our technical coordinator
has experience with ArcView from a previous job and will be the primary
user of the software at the council's office in Mount Vernon, Washington.
His work plan for the coming months specifically includes considerable
time to work with ArcView and develop various GIS projects."
Sky Island Alliance, NM e97.
(1315 Coal Ave. SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106 USA tel:505-243-5319
fax: 505-243-3477 email: skisland@swcp.com GIS Contact: David Coblentz)
"Sky Island Alliance is dedicated to the preservation and restoration
of native biological diversity in the sky islands of the southwestern
United States and northwestern Mexico. These mountain islands are among
the most diverse ecosystems in North America due to their great topographic
complexity and unique location at the meeting point of several major desert
and forest biological provinces. We conduct scientific research to provide
a better basis for management and disseminate this information through
environmental education programs that foster an appreciation for the sky
islands and biological diversity in general. .....The Sky Island Alliance
received an ESRI Conservation Program grant for the following books and
software: 1 ArcView 3.0 for Windows with Spatial Analyst 1 book "Getting
to know ArcView GIS" Our Program Coordinator (Jack Humphrey) is using
this software to display map coverages of the Sky Island/Greater Gila
reserve design for fund raising and organizing fieldwork and ecological
reviews.
Smartwood Program (see under Rainforest Alliance)
South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, Sc, e98.
(456 King Street, P.O. Box 1765, Charleston, SC 29402 tel: (843) 723-8035
email:scccl@charleston.net GIS Contact: Dr. Craig E. Campbell
phantom@clemson.campuscwix.net.) "The Conservation League is presently
initiating one GIS-intensive project tentatively entitled
"The Greenbelt Project: Keeping the Country in the Lowcountry."
In the Charleston area, as in every metropolitan region in the country, suburban
development is consuming rural lands at an alarming rate. One study has
shown that while the population of the metropolitan area has grown 41
percent from 1973 to 1994, the urbanized area has grown by 255 percent.
This low-density urban and suburban development pattern, known as "sprawl,"
has numerous negative consequences, including unnecessary conversion of
farm and timber land, loss and fragmentation of important habitats, excessive
infrastructure development costs resulting in a waste of taxpayer money,
increased dependence on the personal automobile and subsequent rise in
air pollution, increased water pollution levels, and loss of historic
and cultural resources. Other development practices are known to be both
more attractive and more economical to the community as a whole. Any redirection
away from public policies and practices that currently favor sprawl toward
a more positive development approach will rely on solid information and
public education. The Greenbelt Project is a partnership of many groups,
including historic preservationists, industry and commerce, rural community
associations, farmers, timber companies, hunters, and fishers. These partners
tend to focus on specific places or resources within the region, and this
GIS mapping project will help them to understand the regional context
and thus develop a regional vision. For the most part, these groups do
not have the interest or capacity to do their own GIS work. SCCCL will
develop the GIS products in collaboration with our partners and the material
will be distributed through all of the normal channels of communication --
the best way to communicate with the engaged public. The first step
of the Greenbelt Project
will be to develop a predictive model for urban development in the
region over the next thirty years, based on current trends and data from
the 1970's through the 1990's. Resources of importance to various constituency
groups (including cultural, historic, ecological, agricultural, fisheries,
and others) will then be identified and mapped. This information will
then be combined to reveal "lands at risk." Proposed map products will
make a good faith effort at answering the question: "What will happen
if we don't do anything differently?" If a significant segment of the
population finds the answer unacceptable, it will become easier for the
community to take the next logical step: to explore how local policies
might be changed to yield a different outcome thirty years hence."
Don't miss their
Interactive Projects Map.. . For a look at their GIS modeling methodology,
see the paper: "Modeling
and Predicting Future Urban Growth in the Charleston Area" (by
Jeffery Allen, South Carolina Water Resources Center, Strom Thurmond Institute,
Clemson University. and Kang Shou Lu, Strom Thurmond Institute, Clemson
University) "For the prediction of urban transition probabilities,
four techniques including statistical modeling, rule-based modeling, focus
group mapping, and integrated GIS modeling were used in the project."
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