Many people think there is nothing left to conserve in southern California, that it has all been developed.  But they are wrong.  Over the past 20 years of participation in land-use planning and conservation in this region, I have been surrounded by intense emotion and conflict, to the extreme of needing to be escorted by armed policemen into meeting halls ...

The people who oversee federal and private wildlands contend with fire risks, development, mining, timber production, rare and endangered species, recreational demands, water quality and availability, ecological risks, climate change, and variable budgets. On top of that, the data they need to analyze to make their decisions come in many forms from multiple sources. For a land manager this can ...

I just came back from 2 weeks in France where everything is now labeled with a carbon index ("Indice Carbone"). I took the metro to go to a meeting and the transportation carbon dioxide costs were posted on the walls: 4.3g CO2. Comparatively, I took a bus to see the sights on my way back: over 100g CO2. The ...

In 2011, I was invited to participate in a National Science Foundation workshop in Kilauea Military Camp, Hawaii  focused on Indigenous peoples and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).  My experience working with this diverse group, later named the Hi'iaka group, was incredibly complex and rewarding. Many challenges and opportunities exist in digital mapping from an indigenous perspective ...

Health and medical fields use them.  Walmart and businesses are using them.  How about the conservation world?  Not much – yet.   I’m speaking of computer-based decision-support systems.  There are some examples of spatially-explicit, interactive models designed to inform conservation priority setting, but this approach is not yet well understood or wholeheartedly embraced by conservation practitioners.  That’s too bad because ...