James B. Johnston, Marcia E. McNiff, William R. Jones, Wei Ji, Lawrence R. Handley, John Barras, and Pierre Bourgeois
The National Biological Service's (NBS) mission is to provide leadership in gathering, analyzing, and disseminating biological information as support for sound management of the Nation's natural resources. Since becoming operational in November of 1993 through the transfer of programs from various bureaus within the Department of the Interior, the NBS, in cooperation with other Federal, State, and local partners, has begun research, inventory and monitoring, information sharing, and technology transfer. Through these activities, the NBS is fostering an understanding of biological systems and their benefits to society, and providing the essential scientific support and technical assistance required for management and policy decisions. The role of NBS's Southern Science Center (SSC) in Lafayette, Louisiana, formerly the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetlands Research Center, is to provide leadership in research and development related to the Nation's natural resources for the Southeast. The research focuses on wetlands ecology, animal ecology, and the development and application of spatial analysis techniques for natural resource related studies.
Current geographic information system (GIS) technologies in use at SSC are designed to provide natural resource managers with the on-line data and computerized techniques necessary to make informed decisions. Major GIS activities at SSC include: compilation and analysis of digital databases for monitoring of natural resources; integration and transfer of databases with existing digital databases from various sources into a comprehensive GIS; and development of multifunctional decision support systems for natural resource managers using these data. NBS's SSC will be an active participant in the National Information Infrastructure (NII), in particular the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), which will facilitate the dissemination of research results and other knowledge and information gained from these efforts.
COMPILATION AND INTERPRETATION OF DIGITAL DATABASES
The SSC develops databases and provides support for a wide variety of spatial analysis projects for numerous Federal, state, local, and private entities using ArcInfo GIS software (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA). For example, the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) is a 7-year, $300 million dollar effort enacted by Congress to address coastal Louisiana wetland loss. SSC's support for this project includes planning and monitoring restoration projects and co-chairing the wetlands monitoring Technical Advisory Group. Support for other projects includes providing data to assess Hurricane Andrew damage to Louisiana's natural resources, assisting in the development of GIS capabilities and digital databases for resource management personnel, and providing GIS and data management support to monitor the status and trends of wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico area.
Wetland Habitat Change Analysis
The SSC has been researching wetland loss in coastal Louisiana since the late 1970's. Historical aerial photography of coastal Louisiana was acquired for 1956 and aerial photography was flown for 1978, 1985, and 1988. The photography was photo-interpreted, classified, and digitized by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) and the NBS's SSC. The data was analyzed to provide habitat change acreages and show areas of wetland loss and gain. An initial wetland loss study completed in 1981 indicated that coastwide loss rates within the time frame 1956-78 were approaching 47 mi2/yr. In late 1987, Congress provided funds to SSC for a subsequent study to identify areas of continuing loss. The study compared and updated wetland loss rates of coastal Louisiana from 1956 to 1988 for 275 - 1:24,000 quadrangles, and showed that loss rates, although decreasing, remained high. Several areas in coastal Louisiana were also identified for more intense study. Changes in the active Mississippi River Delta area from 1956 to 1988 were studied.
Maps resulting from this project were used as tools for Federal and state decision makers planning where dredge material should be deposited for marsh restoration and where crevasses (levee cuts) should be placed to promote subdelta formations (land accretions). The wetland trends for four time periods over a period of 32 years were examined so that areas of continuing wetland loss could be pinpointed. Data from 1956-1978 indicated that approximately 50 percent of the wetlands had been lost, however; since 1978 rates have decreased partly because of previously mentioned management practices. The greater New Orleans area was also chosen for further study, since much wetland loss has occurred over the years from both natural (storms) and human induced (urban encroachment and dredging) influences. Due to the close proximity of New Orleans to the Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge, a study was undertaken to determine not only how much habitat change had taken place over time, but what type of change. For 1956 and 1988, habitat data was generalized from a detailed level of the NWI wetland classification system to six major categories to facilitate understanding of the information presented in the maps. A change matrix was developed and a color scheme assigned to show the exact type of change which took place in each area on the map from 1956 to 1988. It was evident from the study that large areas in Bayou Sauvage that had been marsh in 1956 had become open water by 1988. Two wetland restoration projects through CWPPRA are being constructed to aid in reversing these trends.
Wetland habitat maps for Florida's Central and Western Santa Rosa Island and eastern Perdido Key were also compiled at SSC. A series of maps was created for the project, entitled "Habitat Mapping in the Gulf Islands National Seashore," using wetland habitat data for several time periods. In addition, a series of basemaps was created to map red wolf habitat on the Seashore to support research being conducted by the National Park Service to map the red wolf distribution on Mississippi and Florida's coastal Gulf islands. By tracking the wolf's existence and location over time, researchers have the information to estimate population, migration, preferred habitat, and any environmental or man-made factors that may affect the wolf's well-being.
Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act
The Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) passed by Congress created an interagency task force of State and Federal agencies responsible for the design and implementation of coastal conservation and restoration projects in Louisiana. The nine categories of projects are: freshwater introduction and diversions, sediment diversions, marsh management, hydrologic restoration, beneficial use of dredged material, shoreline protection, barrier island restoration, vegetative planting, and sediment and nutrient trapping. All projects are monitored to evaluate their success. The monitoring efforts of the SSC for CWPPRA projects include obtaining high resolution (1:12,000 to 1:24,000) color infrared aerial photography for each project and performing site-specific habitat mapping for selected projects where it is deemed necessary to the monitoring effort by the Technical Advisory Group. Projects may be monitored for up to twenty years. Aerial photography is acquired for pre-project conditions and then is acquired three more times over the monitoring period. The basic goal of habitat monitoring is to provide a consistency of products so that wetland habitat changes can be accurately assessed throughout the project life. To ensure this, detailed standard operating procedures were developed for each stage of the monitoring process including aerial photograph acquisition, photointerpretation, digital conversion, and GIS analysis.
The digital conversion phase includes the scanning of high resolution, color infrared aerial photography and the raster to vector conversion of the photointerpreted data set. The aerial photography is scanned, georectified, mosaiced together, and plotted to provide an accurate and current base map for each restoration site. The photointerpreted mylars are also scanned and converted to binary raster file format. The raster file is registered to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using ground-truthed GPS points, and then converted to vector format using ArcInfo software.
Each year of habitat data will be incorporated into the GIS on a project-by-project basis. Individual project maps consisting of the digital base maps overlaid with the habitat data will be created for each year of data collected. These maps and associated digital data sets can be easily distributed to users. Area summary statistics for each habitat type are generated for each project using ArcInfo. As additional time periods of data are accumulated, multidate wetland trend data (both digital and hardcopies) indicating loss and/or gain of wetlands and changes in wetland habitat composition over time, will be used as a tool for assessing management effectiveness, measured by net revegetation, for each project.
INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL DATABASES FROM VARIOUS SOURCES INTO A COMPREHENSIVE GIS
SSC conducts a variety of spatial analysis projects using techniques that integrate data from many different sources, particularly satellite imagery, U.S. Geological Survey's digital line graphs (DLG's), field data collected from various sources, and ground control points collected with global positioning systems (GPS).
Satellite Imagery
Several U.S. Department of Interior agencies collaborated with The Nature Conservancy (Louisiana) to determine the location of potential critical bear habitat within selected bottomland hardwood forests in Louisiana. Since January 7, 1992, when the Louisiana Black Bear was first listed as a threatened species, the United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed selected areas as critical habitat essential to the black bears existence. Bottomland hardwood forests were designated as critical habitat for the Louisiana Black Bear. Since normal forest management practices do not have adverse affects on critical habitat, it is thought that most of the critical habitat being lost is due to the permanent conversion of forestland to agriculture. The SSC and its partners classified Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery to identify potential bear habitat. Analysis of classified imagery indicates that over 1.3 million acres of bottomland or other forested wetland habitat have been converted to agricultural use. The classified imagery was then overlaid with public lands and roads using ArcInfo to correlate conservation or management areas with potential critical habitat and identify potential areas of conflict. Maps were plotted using ARCPLOT and displayed at a public hearing on the issue.
The Caddo Lake, Texas, area has been designated a "wetland of international importance" by the RAMSAR Treaty. There is a growing interest among local interest groups and educational institutions in learning more about the Caddo Lake ecosystem and its preservation, and in learning about technologies, such as GIS, with which they can study the ecosystem. Thus, SSC is providing GIS technical support and teaching workshops to these interest groups. SSC is also providing workshops on various aspects of data collection and groundtruthing using GPS, and taking part in breeding bird surveys and GAP analysis vegetation verification. Special emphasis of the training is on the capabilities and the use of GIS for natural resource planning and management by local educators, the public, and governmental agencies. A preliminary classification of Landsat TM imagery of the Caddo Lake area is being used as a reference map for ground truthing. Once ground truthing is completed, the classification will be updated and used to create a base map for a GIS of the Caddo Lake ecosystem. Data such as hydrology, transportation networks, and park boundaries will be incorporated into a GIS system where the data will be analyzed, displayed and stored. ARCVIEW 2 software will be used for public outreach programs and demonstrations of GIS capabilities for use by local users and managers.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Field Data Sets
SSC completed a project which demonstrated the ability to retrieve accurate digital coordinates using GPS and integrate the data for use in a GIS. The coordinates for boat trails in Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge were obtained by riding along the boat trails with a GPS unit which was programmed to record data points every few seconds. The point data was later downloaded into ArcInfo, where it was overlaid with previously existing coverages for roads and wetland habitats. The product of this project was a field map designed in ARCPLOT, showing the locations of roads and boat trails in the refuge. The map can also be used as a reference guide for fisherman using the refuge.
In response to the demand for information concerning the condition of the nation's ecological resources, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), a nationwide research and monitoring program to establish the status of various environmental resources of the United States and track the changes in status over extended periods of time. The Estuaries component of EMAP represents one of these resources. In 1994, SSC and EPA created an Inter-agency Agreement to jointly perform research in the areas of statistics, quality assurance/control, and GIS for the EMAP-E Program. Within the Gulf of Mexico region, individual estuarine sampling areas are currently being delineated on GIS basemaps. Within these estuarine study areas, sampling stations are delineated. Field surveys are then conducted to measure the indicators of the health of plants and animals, the quality of their surroundings, and the presence of pollutants. Maps designed in ARCPLOT are used to illustrate the locations and size of estuaries along the coast, delineate the boundaries of the individual estuarine drainage areas, and to portray the locations of the EMAP-Estuaries sampling stations over a four year period.
Another series of maps was created as deliverables for an Inter- agency Agreement with the EPA. This map series shows the geographic distribution of various types of inactive and abandoned hazardous waste sites in relation to the type of wetland habitat within the Louisiana coastal zone. The maps were created using GIS point-in-polygon overlay techniques by taking a database of inactive and abandoned hazardous waste site information and overlaying the point locations with 1988 wetland habitat data to determine where sites were located in wetland environments. Different point symbols depict the different types of sites, whereas different colors are used to represent the types of wetland habitat. GIS analyses such as these will allow managers to determine which wetland habitat types are the most sensitive to sources of contamination and which types of inactive and abandoned hazardous waste sites pose the highest potential hazard to wetlands.
Barataria - Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) consists of a number of Federal and state agencies, as well as academic institutions. To support this effort, SSC produced a map of oyster resources using ARCPLOT. This map, will be used for the following management applications: 1) to provide an up to date map of the oyster resources within the Barataria and Terrebonne basins; 2) to provide information to the BTNEP staff for incorporation into its comprehensive conservation and management plan to protect the basin's living resources; and 3) to provide regulatory agencies with a tool to assist in oyster management activities such as oyster bed leasing priorities, opening and closing of beds, and estimates of potential production. The map was compiled based on oyster distribution information gathered and compiled by researchers at a local university with assistance from the commercial oyster fisherman of Louisiana and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The locations are divided into zones where oysters thrive under different conditions which correspond with the varying salinity regimes found in wet or dry years. These same zones were also superimposed over a backdrop of a winter 1993 Landsat TM image for reference.
SSC is also involved in a neotropical (migratory) bird study in Big Bend National Park in Texas. There are seventy-four points throughout the park where data is being collected once a week for a period of twenty minutes at each point. Point data are 400 meters off a road and are 4 km apart. The point data was collected using GPS corrected data. Data sets include counts of birds and types of birds, by locations. The data being collected will be integrated with habitat data, natural springs, geologic coverages, and soils data to determine preferred habitats and environmental conditions for the birds.
DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL GIS DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
To effectively and efficiently solve coastal environmental issues and handle complex spatial data and information, a ecosystem decision support GIS is being developed at the Southern Science Center. With three subsystems, natural resource management, environmental impact assessment, and data information handling, respectively, the multifunctional system is designed to provide decision-makers with tools to integrate and organize various environmental data and information for analytical modeling, spatial query, and graphic visualization. The multiple integration approach was employed in this system's development based on ArcInfo, and includes subsystem integration, environmental data integration, decision support function integration, and analytical model integration.
Information to be maintained in the system includes biological and cultural resources and satellite images. The resource and logistical information will be georeferenced to merged SPOT- LANDSAT satellite images, nautical charts and topographic maps. This information will be linked to digital video and still images. The system features multiple windows which allow a user to simultaneously display different types of data, maps, and images. For example, three windows can be opened simultaneously on the screen: one window displaying sensitive habitat and resources on the charts or maps, another depicting a potential land use on the satellite image, and a third showing a moving video of the sensitive habitat linked to the GIS image. The video can be stilled, have resource information overlaid onto the image, and be captured by the system. Attribute or text data can also be displayed for any geographical feature displayed in the windows. Information will be distributed on conventional maps, compact disks, text, and edited video.
The initial module of the system designed at SSC is for wetland value assessment decision support. The Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act of 1990 requires Federal and state governments to evaluate a number of coastal wetland restoration and conservation project proposals submitted for funding under the Act. For this purpose, an analytical model, the wetland value assessment (WVA) methodology, has been developed by scientists and wetland managers which prioritizes potential wetland restoration sites based on a cost-benefit ratio of habitat unit values. The WVA model requires a huge volume of geographic and environmental information and involves rule-based analytical procedures, demanding a decision support GIS implementation. This multifunctional system is designed to provide decision-makers with tools to integrate and organize various environmental data and information for analytical modeling, spatial query, and graphic visualization. The decision support system also has modules under development for wetland permitting support, biodiversity analysis, and waterfowl management.
DATA DISSEMINATION AND MANAGEMENT
To facilitate the dissemination of research results and other knowledge and information gained from the above efforts, SSC is developing the capability for increased access and integration of spatial and biological information from a number of organizations and locations that house this information. Once completed, the information will become part of the Federal government's National Information Infrastructure (NII). The NII will allow users to access, manipulate, organize, and use spatial and biological data and information from federal, private, state, local, and other sources. The NII encompasses both the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). Data and metadata will be presented and will adhere to the guidelines and procedures set forth in the Executive Order entitled "Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure," signed by President Clinton on April 11, 1994, as well as to the standards for thematic information set forth by the Department of the Interior's Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).
Participation in the NII will be implemented in three overlapping steps of increasing complexity and capability at SSC. The products of these steps are not static, but evolving, growing systems. These steps are: 1) Development of a Science Data Directory: Through Internet a user (client) will be able to query the directory (server) and locate points of contact for desired information. Users can then contact the custodian of the data to determine whether the data meets their needs and, if so, determine how to acquire the data; 2) Development of an Automated Information Clearinghouse: The "directory" step will be extended to a "clearinghouse" so that users will be able to search a network of on-line computers to find sources of spatial and biological information and access descriptive information (metadata) about the data sets to determine if the data set meets their needs. The user can then contact the source of the data to determine how to acquire the data by means of CD-Rom, floppy disks, etc., where electronic networks are unavailable; 3) Development of a Spatial and Biological Information Infrastructure: Under full implementation of this system the user will be able to access and manipulate data from heterogenous databases from various sources through a variety of technologies and interfaces.
In preparation for participation in the NII, completed spatial data sets are being compiled into an ArcInfo library format, based on USGS's 1:100,000 scale grid system. Data layers are name-separated using the year the data portrays. Several menu- driven AML's have been written to increase user-friendliness and ease of use. This ArcInfo library data structure will be used for a planned FTP site. The directory structure will be hierarchical, and will be listed on a Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) which refers users to the FTP site. Users can tap into the FTP site and find a particular project listed by project (i.e.: coastal zone or CWPPRA), tile (title of 1:100,000 quad), and year (1956, 1978, or 1988). This same structure will be used for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program's Data and Information System, as well as for the CWPPRA and for various projects at the state level. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has numerous datasets such as well locations, abandoned hazardous waste sites, aquifer boundaries with non-point source contaminant data such as the presence of fertilizer in basins. The datasets are in Oracle and are spatially driven through the interface with ArcInfo.
CONCLUSION
In closing, the Southern Science Center's mission in spatial analysis is to research and develop new spatial analysis applications, techniques, and methodologies related to natural resource management. These applications, techniques, and methodologies are then transferred to natural resource managers as computerized decision-making tools. To accomplish this mission, SSC relies on the input and application responses from resource managers to define its research tasks and obtain domain expert knowledge and related information. Lastly, SSC maintains a strong training program for users through workshops and formal courses.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Individuals who have contributed to the success of the SSC spatial analysis program are too numerous to mention them all, however, these individuals are the ones who provided data, analyses, and technical support to the above mentioned projects. They are Art Calix and Scott Wilson - SSC; Pat O'Neil - U.S. Geological Survey; Debbie Fuller - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Robert Greco, Steve Hartley, Craig Johnson, Steve Robb, and Vince Sclafani - Johnson Control World Services; Dwight Shellman - Caddo Lake (TX) Institute; Becky Gullette - Panola (TX) Junior College; and Jamey Johnston - University of Southwestern Louisiana.
Spatial Analysis Branch
National Biological Service's Southern Science Center
700 Cajundome Boulevard
Lafayette, LA 70506
Phone: (318) 266-8556
Fax: (318) 266-8616