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Abstract
A GIS Application for Wildlife Monitoring at the Salton Sea
Track: Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries Management
Author(s): Timothy Krantz, Richard Inman
The Salton Sea is California's largest lake, situated in a closed basin in the Colorado Desert of southeastern California. Sustained by agricultural runoff, the sea is threatened by increasing salinity, unstable lake elevation, and eutrophication. The Salton Sea Authority, a State joint-powers agency, and the Bureau of Reclamation are the lead agencies involved with proposing alternatives to restore the sea and stabilize these three factors. As a result of eutrophication, avian disease, and other agents, the sea has experienced large fish kills and bird die-offs in past decades. One of the measures proposed to ameliorate conditions at the Salton Sea involves development of a wildlife monitoring program and event response plan. The Salton Sea Authority, together with the University of Redlands' Salton Sea Database Program, is developing an event response plan using geographic information systems linked to on-the-ground avian disease and wildlife health monitoring programs. The GIS will enable resource managers to coordinate emergency response action plans to facilitate cleanup of affected areas and reconstruct event occurrences by analyzing meteorology, hydrodynamics, and other water quality and wildlife monitoring data.
Timothy Krantz
University of Redlands
1200 E. Colton Avenue
Redlands, CA 92373-0999
USA
Phone: 909-793-2121 x
Fax: 909-307-6952
E-mail: krantz@uor.edu