Illinois GAP Partners with Conservation 2000

Jocelyn L. Aycrigg, Mark G. Joselyn, Michael R. Jeffords, and Patrick W. Brown

Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, Illinois

The National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) was initiated to address biodiversity conservation at the state and national levels, while Illinois’ Conservation 2000 (C-2000) was established to address the natural resource needs of Illinois into the year 2000. C-2000 is a six-year, $100-million legislative initiative designed to take a broad-based, long-term ecosystem approach to conserving, restoring, and managing Illinois’ natural lands, soils, and water resources while providing additional high quality opportunities for outdoor recreation. The Illinois Gap Analysis Project and C-2000 are cooperating to gather and maintain ecological data to monitor trends in Illinois ecosystems. One of the aims of Gap Analysis is to provide data and analyses to conduct proactive rather than reactive natural resource management. Illinois is fortunate to have a program such as C-2000 that shares these goals implemented at the state level.

C-2000 supports a variety of specific programs including the Critical Trends Assessment Program (CTAP), EcoWatch, and the Ecosystem Partnership Program. The data generated by these innovative programs, each of which is briefly discussed below, will supplement the Illinois GAP project.

Critical Trends Assessment Program

CTAP is a long-term program aimed at monitoring and preserving Illinois’ biological resources. CTAP, to date, has produced a Land Cover Database of Illinois (Luman et al. 1996), conducted statewide scientific monitoring, defined the state’s resource-rich areas (Suloway et al. 1996, http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cwe/rra/rra.html), and assisted Ecosystem Partnership Areas. The Illinois Land Cover Database, generated in conjunction with CTAP and GAP, has been instrumental in promoting this and other research programs, including evaluating potential elk reintroduction sites (Van Deelen et al. 1997) and identifying large and/or aggregated grasslands statewide (McKinney et al. 1998). The Land Cover Database was made possible by the joint funding and efforts of CTAP and GAP.

The long-term monitoring being conducted by CTAP biologists involves intensive field sampling. Thirty sites for each of four primary habitats throughout Illinois will be visited each year over a five-year period before being revisited. The Land Cover Database was used to identify potential monitoring sites in the four primary habitat types of forest, stream, grassland, and wetland. Each monitoring site was chosen based on criteria specific to each habitat. Maps depicting relevant habitats and potentially suitable sampling locations were produced for use in the field by scientists. Data collected at each long-term monitoring site include soil characteristics as well as identification of plant, bird, and mammal species. Illinois GAP will compile and complement this information and could use it for identifying vertebrate distributions. The collaboration between CTAP and GAP has had a significant impact on environmental programs in Illinois. Information generated by CTAP and Illinois GAP will continue to promote the objectives of ecological assessment, monitoring, planning, and management.

A component of C-2000 and CTAP is to maintain and enhance ecological and economic conditions in Illinois. A first step towards this goal was identification of areas in the state which are relatively rich in natural resources. A resource-rich area is large enough for its ecosystems to operate properly, has the potential for protecting or restoring habitat on a large scale, contains examples of natural communities with significant habitat and species diversity, and has habitat types that are rapidly declining in the state (Suloway et al. 1996, Jeffords 1998). Within Illinois, 30 resource-rich areas were defined (Figure 1). The GAP project aims to identify areas with high biodiversity or areas rich in natural resources. This type of analysis conducted for CTAP will greatly benefit and inform Illinois GAP.

Figure 1. Resource-rich areas in Illinois (Suloway et al. 1996)

EcoWatch

Another major component of C-2000 is EcoWatch, which seeks to train "citizen scientists" and students to monitor various ecosystems in Illinois. Volunteers are given a well-defined set of activities developed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). They are allowed to choose one or more sites and entrusted with yearly monitoring activities (Jeffords 1998). The data from these "citizen scientists" is collected in a systematic and timely manner and then submitted to IDNR for use in assessing long-term trends. Currently, RiverWatch and ForestWatch are components of EcoWatch, with PrairieWatch, WetlandsWatch, SoilWatch, and UrbanWatch in various stages of development. The concept of EcoWatch is simple, but implementation is more challenging. The challenge comes in ensuring the data the volunteers collect are scientifically rigorous enough to be valid, but the collection procedures are simple enough to be done by volunteers (Jeffords 1998). Extensive curriculum materials, identification keys, and potential sampling locations have been developed in support of this program. Since 1994, over 800 citizens, including school teachers, have been trained in EcoWatch procedures.

Gap Analysis attempts to identify habitat types and species not well represented on federal-, state-, or county-owned lands in Illinois. Volunteers collecting data throughout the state will assist in better defining the underrepresented species and communities. Currently the Illinois GAP Project is mapping distributions of species occurring in collections at the Illinois Natural History Survey. Specimen locality records from these collections are being used in modeling species distributions across the state. The data collected by "citizen scientists" will enhance and update the current data on species distributions. Collaboration between GAP and EcoWatch includes shared goals, a strong environmental education component, and support of EcoWatch using data and GIS capabilities developed by Illinois GAP.

Ecosystem Partnership Program

The Ecosystem Partnership Program is a further component of C-2000. These public/private partnerships attempt to combine natural resource stewardship with compatible economic and recreation development by bringing local stakeholders together. The partnerships seek to make resources (e.g., technical and popular reports on local recreation, natural resources, and economics of their area) of the IDNR-and, by extension, GAP-available to people at the grassroots level who are interested in problem solving. The information can be used, for example, to design individual projects such as habitat restoration. Currently there are 22 Ecosystem Partnerships throughout Illinois (Figure 2). This innovative approach is particularly appropriate for Illinois, where over 95% of the land is privately owned.

Figure 2. Ecosystem partnerships in Illinois (IDNR 1998).

Building and maintaining these types of partnerships is one of the goals of implementing GAP. All the data collected, assembled, and mapped for the GAP project will be quite valuable when they become available to the citizens of Illinois. The Ecosystem Partnerships in Illinois will facilitate the distribution of these data as well as make hardware, software, and expertise available to citizens. In this way, Ecosystem Partnerships will help assure that GAP will have tangible and long-term benefits to the state.

Illinois GAP and C-2000

It is hoped the data collected and mapped for GAP will not be restricted by political boundaries but rather a step towards comprehensive land conservation planning (Gap Analysis Program 1996). The well-established C-2000 program with its EcoWatch volunteers, ecosystem partnerships (Figure 2), resource-rich areas (Figure 1), and land cover database has already crossed political boundaries and is of great value to Illinois GAP. The existence of C-2000 in Illinois provides the GAP project with valuable data and avenues in which to promote the goals and implementation of proactive biodiversity conservation at the community and landscape levels.

Literature Cited

Gap Analysis Program. 1996. A handbook for Gap Analysis. USGS Gap Analysis Program, Moscow, Idaho. http://www.gap.uidaho.edu/GAP/AboutGAP/Handbook/.

Jeffords, M.R. 1998. Pulling it all together. The Critical Trends Assessment Project. Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, Illinois. 8 pp.

Luman, D.E., M.G. Joselyn, and L. Suloway. 1996. Land cover of Illinois. Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, Illinois.

McKinney, L.B., M.G. Joselyn, J.L. Aycrigg, and P.W. Brown. 1998. Identification of large grasslands ecosystems in Illinois. Final report to Division of Natural Heritage, Illinois Department of Natural Resources. 165 pp.

Suloway, L., M. Joselyn, P.W. Brown. 1996. Inventory of resource-rich areas in Illinois: An evaluation of ecological resources. Illinois Department of Natural Resources/EAA-96/08. 167 pp.

Van Deelen, T.R., L.B. McKinney, M.G. Joselyn, and J.E. Buhnerkempe. 1997. Can we restore elk to southern Illinois? The use of existing digital land-cover data to evaluate potential habitat. Wildlife Society Bulletin 25:886-894.