UCSB Biogeography Lab

Sierra Nevada Network for Education and Research

Summaries of SNEP GIS Database

The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP) published a comprehensive assessment of the ecoregion in a report to Congress in 1996. The report contained a great deal of spatial information about the entire Sierra Nevada ecosystem. To support the assessment, a geographic information system (GIS) database was compiled. This valuable resource is available over the World Wide Web, but users need specialized software to extract information for their own analyses.

Several institutions are working to make the SNEP material more accessible and useful to a broad range of stakeholders in the ecoregion. Creation of a new campus near Merced provides an opportunity for the University of California system to contribute to environmental research, education and outreach in the region. The UC Office of the President (UCOP) has recognized this opportunity and has already moved decisively to promote and fund research and outreach activities that help to identify UC Merced with innovative environmental education and research aimed at both the Sierra Nevada and the San Joaquin Valley. UCOP has funded the Sierra Nevada Network for Education and Research (SNNER) to disseminate SNEP data and findings and to support their application in local and regional conservation and ecosystem management activities. This web site provides graphic and tabular summaries of SNEP data for 24 watersheds and 20 main counties over the World Wide Web. This information is being presented as a standardized series of tables and graphs for each county and basin. A user begins by selecting either a county or a basin name from a list. The selection is linked to a web page for that area, which contains some basic information about it. Each topic is linked either to an explanation of the topic and the source of information used to calculate it or to a chart or table summarizing more complex information. It is our hope that repackaging the SNEP data and putting it on the Web will prove more valuable to local planners and grass-roots organizations.

Click on this link and select either a county or a basin to see the summary results.

SNEP GIS summary by county or basin