Our GIS watershed approach and conceptualization of spatial ecological gradients may be of help to other community watershed associations, regional planning groups, university research teams, or county conservation districts ultimately, the goal of environmental monitoring and assessment is to facilitate and prioritize strategies for environmental clean up and ecosystem restoration to improve the quality of life for local communities (American Heritage River Steering Committee 1999, Bruns and Wiersma 2004).
Our work here is intended as one approach to using and integrating these tools for examining potential impacts to stream and river ecosystems from different land cover/uses with a particular focus on assessing watershed impacts from regional coal mining (Bruns et al. (1992) reviewed the potential effects of global climate change on freshwater ecosystems but found the greatest impacts to be associated with watershed modification and use, and contamination of aquatic resources by humans. However, geospatial technologies like geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) have emerged as critical tools to this broad-scale approach in environmental monitoring, assessment, and management (Wessman Land use changes are also the dominant stressor on freshwater ecosystems. Assessment of change in land use and land cover at landscape and watershed scales of resolution has been difficult. INTRODUCTION There has been a strong scientific consensus that changing land use is the single most important component of global environmental change affecting ecological systems (Vitousek 1994, National Research Council 1993). These data and 3-D GIS (CommunityVIZ) are being employed in a local borough planning and watershed management project. Web based GIS is being transferred to counties to facilitate sharing, maintenance, and distribution of these local scale data. Ongoing community networking with county GIS champions has resulted in obtaining new aerial imagery and products valued at over $2M with a 438% leveraging ratio of federal resources. Environmental applications have integrated GIS with satellite imagery, local scale orthoimagery, and GPS for mapping and analysis of pollution sources (acid mine drainage outfalls, combined sewer overflows, mine waste piles – a $2 billion clean up problem) and sampling sites linked to real-time water quality monitors with Web based GIS for public data dissemination these technologies are intended to expedite environmental cleanup (a $2 billion cost) in the region.
CONCERT TYP O NEGATIVR 2002 WILKESBURRY PA SERIES
A series of initial public participation meetings identified important GIS data gaps and started several data acquisition projects ongoing PPGIS meetings have allowed us to coordinate with community partners in environmental education and monitoring and for resource leveraging to obtain local scale aerial data.
A GIS master plan was started in 1999 for this 2000 square mile watershed with over 190 local communities and agencies. The mission of this program is to implement a locally independent, regionally coordinated, multiple purpose GIS. A community GIS program was initiated for northeastern Pennsylvania in 1998 when President Clinton designated the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers (from over 120 national applicants).
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