Abstract

State-Level Resource Planning using Raster Analysis
Track: Conservation
Authors: Brian Culpepper, Hanna Ford, Pam Cooper

An assessment of the risks to the primary natural resource concerns plus the prioritization of agency programs to protect these resources was the goal of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Statewide Resource Assessment (SRA) project. The Arkansas NRCS office partnered with the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) at the University of Arkansas and many other natural resource partners to leverage the knowledge of our natural resource experts, the existing digital dataset and the modeling capabilities within ArcGIS to design and develop over twenty unique models to represent the relative risks to each NRCS targeted resource concerns within Arkansas. As part of the GIS technical support team for this project, we would like to share our experiences with this project and explain how the planning and model development process has sharpened the focus of resources from the NRCS staff and other natural resource decision makers within Arkansas.