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STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM
Land managers and planners have generally not made much use of available
remote sensing data; relevant analyses have not been completed in
a transparent way that user's can accept and believe and information
has not been delivered in an accessible way. When data are available,
important questions regarding ecological context and land potential
as they related to remote sensing results and analyses are often
not addressed. Our goal is to provide relevant analyses of remotely
sensed data mechanisms and ecological interpretations important
for land use planning and land management.
PRESENT SITUATION
Planners and land mangers now face a demand from the public they
serve to address the need for habitat conservation on many scales.
Remotely sensed data could serve as the cornerstone of inventories
and analyses that guide land use planning at many scales. However,
planners face monetary restraints; may not be well versed in remote
sensing, GIS, and natural resource management; and often do not
trust the results of new technologies that are not transparent and
easy to understand. Information needs to be presented in a format
that is cost effective, easily interpreted, and easy to understand.
Thus a simple decision support system and delivery mechanism is
required where none is now available. Remotely sensed data will
never be used as it might unless information is accessible and the
results are put in their proper ecological context.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS
We set out to defined conservation opportunity areas for Boone County,
Missouri, and to place the results within their proper ecological
context. We used the structure provided by the Missouri Resource
Assessment Partnership (MoRAP) to form an interagency committee
made up of agency partners to oversee our progress, and to ensure
buy-in from partners by seeking input from the start through all
phases of the project. This explicit, up-front participation by
the user community is the first important aspect of our approach.
The second is our clear placement of remote sensing and other data
layers within an understandable ecological context. Any given site
has a unique set of abiotic conditions (geology, elevation, drainage,
soil, slope, aspect) and will tend to support different biota and
respond differently to management, whether the management is for
biodiversity conservation, agriculture, or industrial development.
Planners must consider differences among sites and site types in
order to select appropriate targets for action. Ecoregion delineations
are accessible and provide a convenient tool for defining ecological
context. We have divided Missouri into four ecological sections,
32 subsections, and 358 land type associations (LTAs), and each
one has a different potential for supporting plants and animals.
Figure 1(a) shows the land type associations and their potential
to support natural grasslands and forests within Missouri and Figure
1(b) shows the potential for LTAs that bisect Boone County. The
third important principle we employed was the idea that data layers
need to be available at low cost to users across the nation. Therefore,
we selected basic analyses that use the National Land Cover Database
(NLCD), the National Elevation Database (NED), and TIGER road files.
TECHNICAL APPROACH
TAKEN
We used well-known GIS software (ARC/INFO and ArcView) to perform
novel analyses to easily accessible data layers. A key aspect of
this approach was the creation of ArcView extension tools that allow
the user to perform these analyses in a flexible way using widely
available computer hardware and software. The procedures include:
(1) define core blocks of natural vegetation via analysis of the
NLCD (user defines what 'core' habitat is), (2) create a road buffer
coverage (user defines road buffer width by road type), and (3)
intersect the results of the core habitat and the road buffer layers
to create an Opportunity Area (OA) coverage.
PRODUCTS: CASE STUDY FOR
BOONE COUNTY
Boone County is situated on the northern
border of the Ozark Highlands, and the southern and western portions
of the county were historically forested landscapes whereas the
northern and eastern portions were grassland (Fig. 1a, 1b). The
current land cover corresponds with historical patterns and potentials;
the former grasslands have been converted to cropland and the former
forests are a mixture of wooded area and open grassland. The Missouri
River Corridor, which forms the southern boundary of the County,
has largely been converted to cropland. Figure 2(a) shows the forest
and grassland conservation opportunity areas for Boone County when
the user selects a 30 meter buffer away from habitat edges and a
variable width road buffer (depending on road size), whereas 2(b)
shows OAs when the user selects a 90 meter edge buffer. Important
conclusions for this analysis include: (1) when forest OAs are delineated,
and the largest of these grow in forest LTAs; conservation or restoration
of forests should be most successful in those LTAs; (2) similarly,
grassland OAs occur in grassland LTAs and should be conserved and
restored in those regions; and (3) the total area of OAs is impacted
strongly by user choices (for example, core grassland using a 30
meter edge buffer for LTA TP6b is 35,210 hectares and using 90 meter
edge buffer is 7164 hectares, almost five times smaller).
ANTICIPATED
IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS IN URBAN GOVERNMENT
The interagency MoRAP committee working on opportunity area assessment
remains active. Substantial interest from several agencies bodes
well for the future use of these types of analyses. Specifically,
the local USFWS office in Boone County, the state Missouri Department
of Conservation, the state Department of Natural Resources, and
the Missouri Department of Transportation have representatives on
the committee and indicate that they will use the results generated
to date. The formal structure in place at MoRAP will ensure agency
input and buy-in as the project moves forward
ADDITIONAL WORK
The main areas for additional work suggested by the interagency
committee include (1) refinement of the ArcView extension for OA
delineation, (2) refinement of OA delineation models, including
analysis of the possibility of modeling enduring feature conservation
targets to guide planning efforts, (3) providing additional ArcView
extension tools related to evaluation of the conservation value
of OAs within ecoregions, (4) completion of similar analysis across
larger regions, and (5) more careful consideration of data delivery
mechanisms, including the possibility of Internet delivery of products
via ArcIMS or similar map server software.
PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Gust Annis, MoRAP Aquatic Resources Research Assistant
Melissa Bates, MoRAP GIS Technician
Clayton Blodgett, MoRAP Remote Sensing Coordinator
David Diamond, MoRAP Director
Taisia Gordon, MoRAP GIS Specialist
Diane True, MoRAP GIS Coordinator |
