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UCSB IBM ERP Report Abstract for 1996
Annual Report--Year 3
Report Date: February 15, 1996
Complete version of 1996 Annual Report.
Executive Summary
The earth is experiencing a mass extinction of species that is unparalleled in its history. Installation of an effective reserve network to minimize future loss of biodiversity will require coordinated conservation assessments at international, national, regional and local levels. Such assessments already rely heavily on advanced mapping technologies and computing systems for spatial data analysis and display.
The goal of this project is to design and test a prototype Spatial Modeling and Decision Support System for Conservation of Biological Diversity. The project is closely tied to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Gap Analysis Program, and to related efforts at multi-species conservation planning in southern California. Our project objectives are to:
During Years 1 and 2 we implemented a local fddi network of IBM workstations, installed a suite of GIS, remote sensing, statistical and analytical software packages, and developed new applications for data cataloguing and browsing, image compositing, image classification, and species distribution modeling. We also instituted a world wide web (WWW) site for sharing data and information via the Internet (www.biogeog.ucsb.edu). Our IBM computing architecture has proven extremely reliable and effective. In Year 3 IBM equipment support was used to provide additional stations for lab personnel and to establish separate file and compute servers. Our 58H remains as the primary file server, while a newly acquired 39H functions as a compute server.
- Design and enable a prototype "regional" computing facility for storage, analysis and visualization of biodiversity data.
- Program a set of specific software applications to support national (and potentially international) Gap Analysis.
- Conduct a conservation Gap Analysis of the Intermountain Sagebrush Ecoregion over six western states.
- Develop applications for monitoring wildlife habitats using multi-temporal satellite imagery.
- Develop software to support reserve siting and reserve design and apply it to reserve design in southern California.
In Year 3 we took advantage of WWW tools to reconstruct our cataloguing tool interface using HTML. We are using PERL CGI scripts to access the database. In addition to offering users a now-familiar WWW browser interface, the new version provides more display functions and automatic filling of fields whose values can be obtained from file description and header information. Our WWW site has also continued to evolve. We now run our own httpd server and are providing many of our datasets via interactive text and graphical interfaces.
In Year 2 we initiated work on satellite image compositing to obtain cloud-free coverage of large regions. We completed this effort in Year 3, arriving at a new approach for compositing daily NOAA AVHRR imagery based on apparent surface temperature, sensor scan angle , and a spectral vegetation index. We used this compositing strategy to develop time-series images for classification of land cover in the Intermountain Sagebrush Steppe Region.
We began edgematching land cover maps across portions of the Mojave Desert and the Intermountain Sagebrush Steppe regions of California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. There were obvious differences in spatial resolution and pattern between states caused by use of different mapping techniques and classification systems. We were encouraged that the newly derived AVHRR composites for this region appear to provide some additional information for developing a more consistent regional land cover map.
In earlier work on siting nature reserves we demonstrated that the reserve selection problem can be reformulated as a classic maximal covering location problem (MCLP) described in the operations research and regional science literature twenty years ago. We solved the MCLP model for a real application using vertebrate distribution data prepared for the Gap Analysis of southwestern California. In Year 3 we reformulated the reserve selection problem with three significant refinements. First, the new model requires that specific target levels of biodiversity management be specified as a percentage of the distributions of each biodiversity element. Second, suitability of the sites for biodiversity management was incorporated into the objective function of the model. Third, the management class definitions were refined by incorporating data on grazing and timber management from existing land use plans. The model has been used by the federally funded Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project to explore alternative land allocation strategies for conserving native biodiversity in this large and diverse region of California.
Our goals in 1996 are to 1) complete database development and conduct a gap analysis of the Intermountain Sagebrush Steppe Region, 2) integrate the various software components that we have produced over the past 3 years into a prototype spatial decision support system for regional conservation analysis and planning, 3) prepare a series of papers for peer-reviewed journals that report the major findings from our IBM ERP project, and 4) develop an interactive query and access environment to make our data and software available over the Internet and via a CD-ROM. Publication of the CD-ROM product is being financed by the National Biological Service.
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