Getting conservation on the land using GIS

Excerpt

New programs, new practices, new rules, more customers, fewer staff—what's a practicing conservationist to do? This article is directed towards any federal, state, or local conservation entity at the field office level that wants to make the most of time spent in the office in order to do the most good outside on the land. It highlights the experiences of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) conservation team at the Champaign County, Illinois field office in using geographic information systems (GIS) to efficiently plan, advertise, design, evaluate, and encourage maintenance of conservation practices resulting in “more” and “better” conservation getting on the land. The authors want other conservation staff to see how they might expand the use of GIS at the county or watershed level to increase the quality and quantity of conservation practices applied to the land.

The basic GIS tools are hardware, software, some basic digital map layers of the natural resources, and an electronic means of linking people to their land. All U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) NRCS field offices should have access to ESRI's ArcView or ArcGIS software …