Monday, September 28, 2009

Vegetation Characterization Products Available for Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge

USGS-National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Characterization Program (VCP) documentation for Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge National River, and Weir Farm National Historic Site has been completed and is available on the Vegetation Characterization Program Web site and the Weir Farm National Historic Site. Products include aerial photography - graphic of orthophoto mosaic, spatial orthophoto data, and flightline index; project report - photo interpretation key, vegetation descriptions, vegetation key, photos of map class, and accuracy assessment methods and results; field data - graphic of field plots, spatial field plots data, field database, physical descriptive for plots and species list for plots; geospatial vegetation information - graphics of vegetation communities, spatial vegetation data, spatial boundary data, and field photos; accuracy assessment information - graphic of accuracy assessment points, spatial accuracy assessment data, and contingency matrix; metadata, and a link to NPS information about Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge National River, and Weir Farm National Historic Site.

For more information, visit the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory & Monitoring - Vegetation Mapping Program website.

(Photo: Mesa Verde national Park photo. Mesa Verde National Park is comprised 21,648 ha (53,494 ac), and is part of the plateau country of southwestern Colorado, and is located between the towns of Cortez and Mancos.)

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Plans to Enhance BAMONA Spatially

In addition to ongoing data collection and maintenance this coming year, the Big Sky Institute plans to convert the Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) database into a geospatial database, develop a Web mapping service, and develop a visualization capability for the BAMONA data set that will support WMS, KML, and/or other accepted standards. The mapping service will be interoperable with NBII Web sites and species page mashups, the USGS National Map Viewer, Google Earth, and other NBII partners/projects such as the Cactus Moth Monitoring and Detection Network that is coordinated by the Invasive Species Information Node (ISIN) partner John Madsen with the Mississippi State University GeoSystems Research Institute. This project is being supported by multiple NBII nodes including Mountain Prairie, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Pacific Basin. The outcome will provide content for regional nodes across the NBII network.

For a list of recent updates, visit the BAMONA blog.

(Photo: Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) website screen image)

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

California Partners in Flight Study Areas Database Now Hosted by Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO)


In collaboration with the University of California (UC)-Davis through the California Information Node (CAIN), the California Partners in Flight (CalPIF) Study Areas Database provides bird monitoring sites and serves as a repository for species breeding status information for the entire state. The database provides an interactive map that shows all CalPIF collaborators’ study areas contributed to date, an interactive focal species breeding status map that show all study areas and detailed information for each focal species, and habitat maps for California. Originally launched in 2005 in collaboration with UC-Davis and Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO) as part of CAIN, the database has moved to PRBO for long-term maintenance and hosting.

(Image: screen shot of the California Partners in Flight Study Areas Database)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Roan Highlands Conservation Planning Initiative: A GIS Approach for Implementing State Wildlife Action Plan Priorities

Andy Carroll, who has previously been associated with the Southern Appalachian Information Node (SAIN) through the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga, has completed a project with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy and the Open Space Institute. The project was competitively selected for funding by the Wildlife Action Opportunity Fund. Southeast Regional GAP data sets were used in mapping application which is used to identify SWAP priority ecological systems. NBII is credited in the final report for hosting the public version of the mapping application. The project has led to new land acquisitions for conservation and was used to support the designation of a new North Carolina State Natural Area along the southern extent of the Roan Highlands. The final report of the project will be available for download from the SAIN website. Andy Carroll credits his previous involvement with SAIN and familiarity with GAP for the approach used in this project.

This team and a collaborative network of state wildlife action plan coordinators are submitting a proposal for developing a uniform multi-state view of SWAP priorities for the entire region.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Dynamic Maps For Bald Eagle Count Site

NBII – in collaboration with Oregon State University, Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NACSE) – hosts the Mid-Winter Bald Eagle Count Database, a long-term national data set on bald eagle observations. Previously, the site used basic image map tools to help users perform map-based queries by route. Although effective, this approach lacked the more immersive experience of a dynamic Web-based mapping interface, in which the user can zoom in or out and load in different base layers while viewing the overlaid data. Also, multiple adjacent routes were hard to discern from one another on a national scale. NACSE designed a custom mapping interface based on Google Maps that allows users to dynamically display and query route information from the Bald Eagle database as well as take advantage of the standard Google Maps features and controls, such as full satellite map coverage at multiple scales for the entire country. The ability to zoom and pan enables users to locate site and route information even when the locations are densely clustered. See the main site at Midwinter Bald Eagle Count Web Site and the “Query by Route” page that has the new mapping tool.