• Park Manager
• Graduate Student or Researcher
• NGO Conservation Planner
• Environmental/Development Consultant
• Municipal/County Planner
• Corporate Environmental Officer
• School Teacher
• Philanthropist
• 
  

Jean helps to manage a 3000 hectare protected area in Mozambique. His team has been creating and gathering information about the park’s ecological and cultural features and management activities for twenty five years. They have just started building a geographic information system (GIS) to manage and analyze this information and integrate it with other people’s data. Jean uses the GeoPortal for several purposes.

First, he uses the search tools to quickly discover what basemaps and conservation datalayers have already been developed for the park and surrounding areas by the federal and local agencies, NGOs, scientists, and students in Mozambique and elsewhere. He is thrilled to discover more than 100 metadata records describing datasets and map services covering the park. Upon reading the metadata, he finds that he already has some of the datasets in his GIS database, although several have been updated, so he clicks the links and downloads the updated files. Based on the metadata, he determines that many of the datasets are too generalized to be useful at a site scale. However, he discovers that graduate students in Mozambique, France, and the United States have created detailed maps of land cover, roads, and predicted species locations at scales that may meet his needs. The land cover and roads datalayers can be viewed online through live map services hosted by each university, so he clicks the links to add each layer to the GeoPortal’s Map Viewer. To this map, he adds comparable data from the federal government’s map server in order to compare the new data sets to ones he has been using. Zooming and panning on the overlay map shows that the roads and land cover for the park are more accurate than the data he had been using, so he clicks the link to download the data to use in his GIS.

Jean is surprised and pleased to see that students and NGOs within and outside Mozambique have been doing interesting projects covering his park. He decides to take advantage of this “free labor” by posting some of his data online to encourage them to continue working in his area, and ensure that they have detailed ground-truthed data to use in their studies. The contact fields in the metadata allow him to email the researchers and begin collaborations focused on his data and science needs.

Rosa is studying the effects of fragmentation and development on songbird populations in the Amazon headwaters. Her research group has been collecting field data in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru for fifteen years, and she would like to test whether observed declines in songbird populations are related to changes in development and fragmentation.

Rosa uses the GeoPortal to find source data and post the results of her analyses. Although she has good data on songbirds in her study area, she is interested to see if additional data exist for her species of interest in Bolivia. Through a combination of keywords and spatial queries, she discovers that researchers in several Bolivian parks have been monitoring her species for a decade, and that their study and database design are compatible with hers. Although their data are not available online, she is able to email them and get the data. In order to measure fragmentation and development, she searches for land cover data in her study area and finds that EarthSat Corporation offers public domain land cover data at an appropriate scale and classification level. She also finds that the University of Maryland and USGS have satellite image mosaics that will help her to cross-check the classification via photo interpretation. She is able to download and integrate these data immediately and begin measuring fragmentation and proximity to development.

Rosa finds a significant relationship between areas of songbird decline and levels of fragmentation and development in parts of her study area. Although she plans to publish a paper on her results in a scientific journal, she wants to make her results and data immediately available to conservationists in South America to validate her results and incorporate them into their conservation and development plans. She finds it easy to post her metadata, including links to the FTP site, from which her data can be downloaded, thereby “publishing” her data for others to discover and use.

Martin works for a conservation NGO that uses science to decide where and how to invest its limited resources to conserve biodiversity. He and his team work at ecoregional and landscape scales, and begin each planning project by assessing the distribution and status of biodiversity in their project area. Next, they assess and map existing and potential stresses to biodiversity. Experts analyze these data to map and prioritize areas for conservation action or further data collection. The results of these conservation assessments are shared with other organizations to inform their planning and research, and to obtain peer review.

Martin uses the GeoPortal for several purposes, including finding source data for his assessments, as well as experts to participate in planning and peer review. In a recent assessment for the Sonoran Desert ecoregion, he used the GeoPortal to discover the best base layers (roads, water bodies, and elevation) for the states of California, Arizona, Baja, and Sonora. He also discovers numerous datasets on the distribution of several reptile species and habitat types that his team is targeting for conservation. Using the metadata, he is able to contact the publishers of these datasets in the US and Mexico and obtain the data for the sets that were not directly downloadable. He also manages to convince a Mexican herpetologist to participate in his team of experts and fill a key knowledge and representation gap.

After five months of hard, but rewarding work, Martin and his team complete their assessment. It results in a huge amount of new and repackaged data, as well as a summary report. Martin and his colleagues spend adequate time documenting their data in standard metadata files. They post their data files on their organization’s website, and even set up a live map service to expose some of their datalayers online. They upload their metadata files to the GeoPortal so others can discover and access their data files and map service. Soon they find that the GeoPortal is the primary website on which governments, NGOs, academics, and corporations are finding and accessing their files and map service. They are pleased to see that their data are being used and cited in numerous studies and conservation efforts at local, regional, and national scales.

Andrea conducts Environmental Impact Assessments for infrastructure projects financed by large development banks. She obtains geographic information about proposed roads, dams, irrigation, and resource extraction projects from developers and bank staff. However, she often struggles to find information about the biology, ecology, hydrology, geology, and cultures of the project areas in order to assess potential impacts and recommend mitigation strategies or further study.

The GeoPortal facilitates and strengthens her work by helping her find and access environmental data for her project areas. On a project to build a road between two villages in Cambodia, she discovered data regarding bird and fish diversity, which indicated very high levels of species richness and endemism in a segment of the proposed road. She went on to find finer scale data on wetlands and streams in order to map potential zones of concern. She was able to document potential impacts and recommend further study as well as alternative routes and stream crossing structures. She also discovered an ethno map covering another segment of the road, which showed that an indigenous hill tribe has been using another area of the proposed road for subsistence hunting and gathering for centuries. Finally, using an updated protected areas datalayer found on the GeoPortal, she discovered that a nature reserve, which was formerly outside the project area, was recently expanded and is now intersected by the proposed road corridor.

Although these data do not replace local data and knowledge gathering, Andrea appreciates the extra layer of due diligence and screening that the GeoPortal brings to her projects. This helps to identify and avoid potential conflicts and enable successful, timely, and sensitive project planning and execution. To that end, Andrea also works with her clients to post information about potential projects in order to increase public and agency participation and identify and resolve potential conflicts early in the planning process.

Sam is a county planner in Texas. He reviews building permits, updates zoning plans, and helps enforce land and water use regulations. His office has had GIS capacity for more than a decade, and they maintain a rich database with hundreds of datalayers concerning nearly every aspect of the county’s geography. GIS data and tools have become essential to every aspect of his work.

The county does not employ biologists and ecologists, so Sam uses the GeoPortal to discover and access data about the biology, ecology, and conservation activities within and around his county. Recently he discovered an ecoregional assessment covering his county, which was conducted by an NGO, with participation from a variety of experts in state and federal agencies and universities. Not only did it reference a great deal of new ecological information for his county, but it identified the northwest section of his county as a global conservation priority due to the abundance and quality of native plants and wildlife that it contains.

The metadata includes a link to a live map service that exposes some of the resulting datalayers. Sam clicks on the link and quickly generates a custom map showing the county “hotspot,” along with several datalayers from the county’s map server, including air photo imagery and the county zoning map. He saves the map view and emails the link to his colleagues, several major landowners, and a local watershed association. Soon the county is abuzz with the news that they are a global biodiversity hotspot! It leads to a collaboration between local landowners, NGOs, schools, and the county to manage and monitor the area to ensure its long term conservation. The consortium uses the GeoPortal to publicize its work and share data locally and with the broader conservation community.

Maria works in the environmental department of a large oil company. Her team is responsible for ensuring that the company’s operations minimize and mitigate impacts on the environment, including biodiversity, water quality and quantity, fire, and other natural hazards. They use GIS data and tools to manage and analyze existing operations and plan future facilities.

She uses the GeoPortal to find and acquire the latest information about ecological features and conservation activities at local, regional, and global scales. Moreover, she knows that the conservation community has a knack for finding and in many cases, creating the best available basemaps information, which they freely publicize and share via the GeoPortal. For a project in Argentina, she was able to find data on roads and water bodies, developed by an NGO from satellite imagery and digital elevation models, which were more accurate and up to date than any other source. These layers formed the basemaps for her project planning and impact assessment.

Maria is able to assist her company in strategic planning by analyzing information on conservation projects, priorities, and protected areas. Places with great ecological significance can be avoided and/or carefully evaluated in consultation with agencies, NGOs, and local communities. The data referenced on the GeoPortal provide an important screening tool for Maria and her colleagues. They save time and money by identifying potential conflicts as well as specific stakeholders and experts in a given area.

Her company has recently posted metadata for some of their datasets, which they know are helpful to the conservation community. This includes locations of existing and planned facilities, as well as geology and basemaps layers that they have developed or refined. These data are used by agencies and NGOs to plan conservation and development activities. By sharing them, Maria’s company demonstrates good corporate citizenship and identifies potential conflicts and opportunities in a proactive manner.

Jorge teaches biology and geography to high school students. He is constantly looking for ways to engage kids in geography and biology issues, using information from the real world. The GeoPortal’s Map Viewer provides an interactive tool for students to select a geographic area and create custom maps depicting datalayers that interest them. Some students map where they live, while others map parts of the globe that they find interesting and wish to visit one day. Others begin with a theme, such as great apes, rainforests, or climate change, and look to see where these things map out on the globe. They use the GeoPortal to make maps to supplement their papers, reports, and presentations.

One of Jorge’s students discovered several citizen-science networks in which the public collects data on bird sightings, water quality, and flower bloom dates. Several of his students have joined these networks and are actively contributing data and viewing them online. Jorge has also convinced the school principal to let him create a GIS course to introduce students to this growing technology. He knows that the GeoPortal will become the key tool for these students to find data and map services needed to do sophisticated projects.

Janet’s family foundation funds conservation and education projects. She uses the GeoPortal’s Map Viewer to combine conservation priority maps from various organizations to identify areas of highest priority, as well as gaps in conservation projects and protected areas. She and the other trustees use these maps to help prioritize which projects and areas should receive funding.

They have funded one of their grantees to post a live map service showing where their grantees are located, with different symbols for the size of the gift and the project status. This makes a useful dashboard to help them visualize and monitor their projects. They have also asked all of their grantees to publish the datasets resulting from their projects, on the GeoPortal, and if possible expose the data themselves through live map services. The foundation provides grantees with additional funding and time to support metadata and data publishing.