Best Practices for Mission Applications

Mojave Desert Ecosystem Program (MDEP): Environmental Data Collaboration

—Fon Allan Duke, Desert Managers Group

The Mojave Desert Ecosystem Program (MDEP) has been in existence since 1995 serving the California Mojave Desert ecoregional needs for shared GIS and digital data. The goal of the program is to provide a resource for federal, state and local agencies to collaborate and share environmental data that focus on the Mojave ecoregion rather than jurisdictional boundaries. Recently MDEP formed a partnership with Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP) which will substantially increase the amount of data available in the Nevada, Arizona and Utah areas of the Mojave Desert by using a network of shared data services. This partnership has resulted in a robust solution that all agencies within the Mojave Desert can utilize with ArcServer shared services support, website support, extranet solutions and enterprise level mobile data collection solutions. These efforts have and will result in reduced cost for various environmental efforts within the Mojave along with improved data resources and greater future data collection using tools such as Arc Mobile and Work Flow Manger from ESRI.