GAP Symposium at 1997 ESRI Users’ Conference National GAP has been cooperating with the ESRI Conservation Program on a variety of activities. This year, we approached the program about giving GAP a room for a day at the annual Users’ Conference. Charles Convis, program director, was very receptive to the idea. Every year, many GAP projects present papers at the conference, but putting them all in one room would give attendees the chance to follow a "GAP track" in a planned sequence. Papers were invited from all GAP projects and many cooperators. The symposium began with a one-hour overview of GAP nationally, followed by technical sessions on land cover and animal distribution mapping, analysis, and applications. As a first-year effort, the symposium went quite well. We would have liked more submissions to choose from, especially applications of GAP data, and hope we get the chance to repeat the symposium in following years. The overview session was particularly well attended and well received, with about 70 people attending, as were sessions on county land use planning applications (see the planning article in this bulletin). In the coming years, we would also like to staff a demonstration in the Conservation Program booth with the interactive CD-ROMs being produced by GAP. If you have any questions or comments, contact Patrick Crist. Patrick Crist |