Modern land management practices require increasing levels of information to successfully compete and comply with strict regulatory and environmental constraints. To effectively consider the cumulative impacts of various land management decisions on air, soil, water, fish, and wildlife, and their associated economic impacts, these effects must be addressed at the watershed, landscape, and regional scales over varying time periods and in the context of active as well as passive ecosystem dynamics and disturbance patterns. Traditional site specific information must be integrated into a broader view for large scale planning efforts. As more organizations embark on watershed analysis and habitat conservation planning, the ability to access a well constructed data base for repeated analysis under changing management scenarios and regulatory constraints will play a vital role in this process. This paper discusses the use of GIS in developing habitat conservation plans. These large scale planning efforts required extensive amounts of data including a variety of GIS data layers. To insure development of a cost effective GIS database, existing information from a variety of sources and scales was integrated into a consistent form for these projects. In addition to integrating existing proprietary data, digital data from public or other sources was used to create the extensive coverages necessary for watershed and/or conservation planning efforts. Finally, Landsat TM image data can be used to generate current vegetation conditions that are consistent across ownerships and assist in change detection analysis for monitoring. Once complete, these databases were utilized to examine a wide range of environmental, economic, and social factors that can be affected by land management practices. Questions that were examined include issues related to water and air quality, population demographics, soil stability and compaction, historical, current, and future vegetative conditions, fish and wildlife habitat, economic impacts, monitoring, and future research needs. The resulting database and analysis results were utilized as an aid to resource managers in making more informed decisions with regards to a wide array of land planning issues.
Phase III of the Ouachita Mountains Ecosystem Management Research study is designed to support operational implementation of ecosystem management at the landscape scale. Four watersheds, from 1,250 to 3,080 hectares, were delineated in the Ouachita National Forest and nearby private industrial forest. To facilitate planning and design of bird surveys, a major component of the study, basic geographic information system (GIS) layers such as hydrography, soil types, road and stream locations, elevations, slope, and aspect were developed to characterize the area. In addition, distinct vegetation spectral types were identified based on unsupervised analysis of multitemporal Landsat TM imagery. After collating the GIS layers, 524 bird census points were established along seventy-two miles of transect. The transects were positioned to sample many different combinations of vegetation spectral types and physical features of the landscape, as determined by the GIS analysis. All bird census points were then located in the field and their positions recorded with differentially corrected global positioning system (GPS) coordinates. Habitat information, such as basal area, canopy height, canopy coverage, vegetation density, and vegetation vertical profiles, was also measured at each bird census point. Preliminary first year results showed that a total of 3,201 birds were encountered representing sixty-one species, of which thirty-one species were neotropical migrants. Habitat data collected at the 524 bird census points were used along with more current multitemporal Landsat TM imagery to classify the study area into actual vegetation categories. The spatial arrangement of these categories was used to examine previously over- or under-sampled areas and to modify bird census points for the 1996 sampling season. In addition, analyses of avian communities as they relate to stand and landscape level habitat parameters were initiated to incorporate the spatial modeling features of the GIS.
Estimates of modern extinction rates appear to be more speculation than observation. Calculations of contemporary "mass extinctions"-based principally on anticipated losses due to habitat destruction in the tropics rather than on documented losses anywhere-are not universally accepted. Using historical land use data compiled by EROS of the USGS and terrestrial mammal data compiled by state Natural Heritage Programs, this paper compares losses predicted by species-area relations to observed mammal losses for each of the forty-nine continental United States. We considered croplands and urban areas as nonhabitat, and any other, nonaquatic land cover type as habitat. We used GRID in ArcInfo to count habitat and nonhabitat pixels in each state. We then converted the raster data to vector data to quantify the size of the largest habitat fragment in each state. These habitat estimates provided area data to estimate ranges in species loss. The results indicate that mammal extinctions in forty-two out of the forty-nine continental United States are greater than or equal to extinctions expected from habitat loss alone. This suggests that applying species-area curves to habitat loss usefully estimates a lower bound to extinction rates and implies that the global extinction crisis is real.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been active in Antarctic mapping and research for more than thirty years. Work has included geologic and hydrologic research, as well as topographic and satellite image mapping. During the last decade, mapping activities have expanded to include the production of digital cartographic data. During the past two years, the agency has established a program (funded by the National Science Foundation) of digital cartographic data support for scientific groups at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, during the austral summer field season and at Reston, Virginia, during the rest of the year. That program uses ArcInfo and ArcView to enter, manipulate, and analyze Antarctic research data. Databases developed by the USGS, New Zealand's Department of Surveys and Land Information, and the British Antarctic Survey have provided a stable backdrop for scientific data, and Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., software has helped the research community tie their observations to those base data. The activities of the last two years have produced various applications such as tracking penguins and developing an information system to assist search and rescue operations around McMurdo Station. Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government.