The purpose of this project was to create a GIS-based model that identifies specific focal areas throughout the range of the redwoods. Focal areas were defined as zones that offer the best conservation opportunities for long-term protection and maintenance of the redwood ecosystem based on current conditions. GIS was utilized because of its spatially explicit architecture and advanced analytical capability.

This model was produced for Save-the-Redwoods League as part of their overall Master Plan – an organizational blueprint for protecting the redwood ecosystem. More specifically, this model was intended to help the League target their future proactive conservation planning efforts more effectively as part of their overall conservation mission while supplying a broader organizational tool that could be shared with its conservation partners in the region.

1. Protected areas form one of the main pillars of biodiversity conservation throughout the world. Only 1.2 percent of the Alberta Foothills is currently protected, which is woefully inadequate by any scientific standard.

2. Protecting the full array of native biodiversity (representation) is an extremely important consideration in a regional protected areas strategy.

3. Approximately 75 percent of the natural variability present in the Alberta Foothills (measured as enduring features) is not adequately represented in a network of protected areas.

4. Approximately 82 percent of the region is comprised of logging tenures and much of this same area is subjected to intensive oil and gas development.

5. Change detection analysis has shown that nearly 9 percent of the ecoregion (~640,000 ha) has been impacted by activities visible from space since 1990 and much of this has been either by a growing network of oil and gas infrastructure or as clusters of clearcut logging. Impact on some species (e.g., woodland caribou) far exceeds this area.

6. The region contains over 36,000 wells, numerous pipelines, and thousands of kilometers of seismic exploration.

7. The Alberta Foothills no longer possesses large intact forest landscapes (undisturbed blocks >50,000 ha), but approximately 1/3 of the region is comprised of smaller forest remnants (over 2,100 with mean size of 1,500 ha) which forms the natural backbone of the region and form one of the major building blocks for protecting the many ecological values identified in the region.

8. Biodiversity values evaluated in the endangered forest mapping included: (1) rare forest types (old growth and less fragmented forests), (2) locations of rare and endangered species and their special habitats, (3) woodland caribou, (4) grizzly bear, (5) freshwater species such as bull trout and arctic grayling, and (6) forest and water-dependent bird species. Many of these values are being seriously degraded and some threatened with local extinction.

9. Decision support mapping results highlight areas within the Alberta Foothills that still contain high values and some of these values are of global or national significance. The highest scoring areas should be considered as candidates for an expanded protected areas network for the region. Recommended starting target should be approximately 16 percent of the ecoregion including existing and new protected areas. Failure to act will result in numerous species extirpations and significant loss of overall ecological integrity, including the degradation of several important ecosystem services.

10. In addition to new protected areas, landscape connectivity along waterways and over land should remain as an important consideration in an overall regional conservation strategy.

11. To be effective, an expanded protected area network alone will not be enough to maintain the conservation values present in the region today. New protected areas should be established strategically in the context of a region under dramatic pressure from development and extractive use. Management and even restoration in some areas should also be considered in an overall plan to achieve ecological sustainability.

12. The combination of Neatweaver®, EMDS®, and ArcMap® provides a powerful decision support planning tool set that can successfully address the topic of High Conservation Value and Endangered Forests.

In November 2002, two science-based conservation organizations, the Conservation Biology Institute (Corvallis, Oregon) and World Wildlife Fund (Ashland, Oregon), conducted an ecological assessment of the mid and lower reaches of the Klamath, including its tributaries and the Upper Sacramento River that flows into the mid Klamath.

Ecosystem health was assessed using computer mapping (Geographic Information Systems – GIS) and satellite interpretation technologies across 870 watersheds; 655 within the mid and lower Klamath and 215 within the Upper Sacramento River. We used a series of indicators or surrogates to assess watershed condition on a relative basis, including road density, stream-road intersections, logging in the basin over a three-decade period, and mining activities.

Because this is the first subbasin assessment of relative ecological condition of the mid and lower Klamath River, this executive summary will focus mainly on the Klamath findings as they are particularly relevant to policy and legislative efforts to manage water uses and restore ecosystem health throughout the Klamath River. In addition, according to monitoring stations of the United States Geological Service, the Klamath is in worse shape today than it was in 2002, the year that 34,000 to 68,000 salmon and trout died from disease in the lower Klamath River due primarily to low water flows and high water temperatures.

As more people move into remote areas throughout western forests and rangelands, it is increasingly important for scientists, land managers, policy makers, and the public to understand the natural fire dynamics of these systems. Over the last decade, wildfires have burned on average approximately 4.2 million acres each year with lows of 2.3 million acres in 1993, 1995, and 1998 and a decadal high of 8.4 million acres in 2000 (NIFC 2004). There is growing concern about the number of severe fires throughout the West and their impact on human communities and local economies. Some argue that the buildup of fuels to unnatural levels is primarily the result of decades of fire suppression while others argue that prolonged and more frequent droughts are most responsible. While both positions are defensible, it is unwise to oversimplify the situation as natural fire regimes and the human impacts on these regimes can be quite complex and highly variable from place to place (Turner et al. 2003).

The purpose of this study was to develop an approach to mapping fire hazard at an intermediate spatial scale for the Oregon portion of the Illionis River Basin and to demonstrate how such an approach can be used to identify and prioritize fire management activities that would have the greatest chance of minimizing human losses from fire while protecting the many conservation values of the region. The Illinois River Basin was chosen because the rural communities in this basin were among the most threatened by the Biscuit fire of 2002.

Detailed information for the Biscuit Fire can be found at the official US Forest Service Biscuit Fire website.

This project is providing spatially explicit scientific foundations for forest management recommendations to sustain and enhance populations of four imperiled carnivores in the Sierra Nevada of California:  marten (Martes americana), fisher (Martes pennanti), wolverine (Gulo gulo), and Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator).  The recommendations focus on enhancing resiliency of existing populations over the next 15-20 years, and assessing strategies for adaptation to climate change in the longer term.

Products include maps depicting habitat value and distribution for each species, lands important to maintaining population connectivity and movement potential between habitat areas, and lands important to accommodating shifts in distribution under climate change.  These maps will serve as foundations for spatially explicit conservation, management, and restoration recommendations, which can be incorporated into National Forest Management Plans and other land use and management plans.

In response to the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels, particularly climate change, and rising energy prices, alternative energy sources are being actively sought throughout the world. Renewable energy sources can help to meet growing energy demands while reducing environmental costs. One widely promoted alternative is biomass energy derived from dedicated biomass crops, as well as from forest and fire management activities. While biomass energy shows some promise as a clean, renewable, and domestic alternative to fossil fuels, it can conflict with critical ecological values and sustainability goals if not properly planned for and implemented.  In order to move toward ecological sustainability, biomass energy production must not degrade these important ecological values.  However, existing projections of available forest and shrubland biomass resources in the U.S. have not adequately taken these values into consideration.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) commissioned CBI to evaluate the effect that ecological constraints would have on estimates of forest and shrubland biomass resources available for energy production in California, as assessed by the California Energy Commission in 2005.  California, home to many biologically diverse and unique areas, has been a leader in developing biomass as a potential source of energy as the demand for electrical power continues to rise.  The current contribution from biomass to electrical power in California is very small, but current and future biomass resources could be effectively developed to contribute as much as 15 percent of electrical energy demands by 2020. Rapid development of biomass as an energy alternative in California and elsewhere without careful consideration of the overall environmental impact could help achieve climate change abatement goals on the one hand but devastate important biological and ecological values on the other.  Accounting for these effects is an initial step towards reducing the environmental impact and risk to important conservation values as biomass development planning and implementation moves ahead. Using available spatial datasets, CBI’s GIS-based analysis quantified and mapped the changes to the current forest and shrubland biomass estimates after accounting for ecological values, such as old growth forest and critical habitat, and the wildland-urban interface.

CBI has managed a Protected Areas Database (PAD) for the United States since 1999 with public and private support. In May 2010, CBI released PAD-US (CBI Edition) v1.1 a national database of protected fee and easement lands. Since then CBI has been working to redesign PAD-US (CBI Edition) to be a fee lands only database to be used along with the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) to represent the terrestrial conservation lands of the United States. The most recent relase PAD-US (CBI Edition) Version 2, reflects this change to fee only database along with full updates to thirteen states (including AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, MI, MT, ND, OR, SD, TN, WA).

Protected areas are the cornerstones around which regional, national and international conservation strategies are developed. Through protected area designations, lands and waters are set-aside in-perpetuity to preserve functioning natural ecosystems, act as refuges for species, and maintain ecological processes. Complementary conservation strategies preserve land for the sustainable use of natural resources, or for the protection of significant geologic and cultural features or open space. PAD-US (CBI Edition) attempts to include all available spatial data on these places. It is our goal to publish the most comprehensive geospatial data set of U.S. protected areas to date.

PAD-US (CBI Edition) provides a rich picture of protected area coverage useful at a variety of scales. It portrays the nation’s protected areas with a standardized spatial geometry and numerous valuable attributes on land ownership, management designations and conservation status (using GAP and IUCN coding systems). It is developed with the purpose of allowing any user – from the general public to professional land managers – to know exactly what lands are protected anywhere the United States and allows them to easily use this inventory for conservation, land management, planning, recreation and other uses. This version should substantially improve our national inventory of protected lands.

Download the national data layer from links below:

– Click here for PAD-US (CBI Edition) Version 2.1 Shapefile (updated September 1, 2016)*

– Click here for PAD-US (CBI Edition) Version 2.1 Geodatabase (updated September 1, 2016)*

*These data have been updated to reflect finalization of reserved status for all protected lands.

The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information, compiling records from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States. This public-private partnership brings together national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and state and federal agencies around this common objective.

The purpose of the NCED project is to, in collaboration with land trusts and public agencies, create a single, up-to-date, sustainable nationwide system for managing and accessing data about conservation easements. Five leading conservation organizations have joined forces to develop the NCED:

Key partners providing support, advice, and data include the Land Trust Alliance, representing the views and concerns of the nation’s 1,700+ local and regional land trusts, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Forest Service.

The IABIN Data Integration and Analysis Gateway (DIAG) is a gateway within Data Basin that provides a custom view of content in the system for IABIN users.  This gateway is intended to showcase the information produced by the 5 IABIN thematic networks: ecosystems, invasive species, pollinators, protected areas, and species & specimens.

IABIN was created in 1996 as an initiative of the Santa Cruz Summit of the Americas meeting of Heads of State. Steadily gaining momentum, there are now 34 countries in the Americas that have officially been named IABIN focal points.  Although endorsed by governments, NGOs, universities, museums, and the private sector all belong to and play important roles in IABIN.

IABIN will provide the networking information infrastructure (such as standards and protocols) and biodiversity information content required by the countries of the Americas to improve decision-making, particularly for issues at the interface of human development and biodiversity conservation. It is developing an Internet-based platform to give access to scientifically credible biodiversity information currently scattered throughout the world in different institutions, such as government organizations, museums, botanical gardens, universities, and NGOs.

The IABIN Secretariat is dedicated to the implementation of IABIN will support a technical standards development process, coordinate catalogues and directories (either centralized or distributed), manage communications including electronic mailing, lists and Web sites, coordinate efforts with other networks, support training for member countries and organizations, and support the efforts of IABIN nodes.

All content developed by IABIN is open and available for public use.

Avoidance of airspace over various sensitive areas (including many designated protected areas) is mandated by public law, including Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and Department of Defense (DoD) Service Branch regulations.  Until now, aviators used a variety of sources to help them identify these areas. Sectional charts, Flight Information Publications (FLIP), Notice to Airman (NOTAMS), and the Managed Areas Database (MAD) are among the resources available to aviators for pre-flight planning and in-flight avoidance.  Because of the cumbersome nature of this approach and the lack of a national standard, numerous errors have been made resulting in civil and fiscal penalties and numerous public complaints.

The purpose of the Protected Areas Database Aviation (or PAD Aviation) is to provide military and civil aviators with current, geo-referenced data that identifies areas sensitive or potentially sensitive to aircraft over-flight using a draft national standard.  PAD Aviation is a customized protected areas database derived from the PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) that streamlines the geometry for rapid response with onboard navigation equipment and contains pertinent attributes unique for aviators.  For example, easy-to-use recommended altitude or avoidance information for individual protected areas.